Georgia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      In Trump Election Interference Investigation, Grand Jury Looms

      by

      An Atlanta D.A. is said to be likely to impanel a special grand jury in her criminal investigation of election interference by the former president and his allies.As the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot fights to extract testimony and documents from Donald J. Trump’s White House, an Atlanta district attorney is moving toward convening a special grand jury in her criminal investigation of election interference by the former president and his allies, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations.The prosecutor, Fani Willis of Fulton County, opened her inquiry in February and her office has been consulting with the House committee, whose evidence could be of considerable value to her investigation. But her progress has been slowed in part by the delays in the panel’s fact gathering. By convening a grand jury dedicated solely to the allegations of election tampering, Ms. Willis, a Democrat, would be indicating that her own investigation is ramping up.Her inquiry is seen by legal experts as potentially perilous for the former president, given the myriad interactions he and his allies had with Georgia officials, most notably Mr. Trump’s January call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find 11,780 votes” — enough to reverse the state’s election result. The Georgia case is one of two active criminal investigations known to touch on the former president and his circle; the other is the examination of his financial dealings by the Manhattan district attorney.Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, opened her criminal inquiry into the former president in February.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMs. Willis’s investigation is unfolding in a state that remains center stage in the nation’s partisan warfare over the vote.The Biden Justice Department has sued Georgia over a highly restrictive voting law passed by the Republican-led legislature, arguing that it discriminates against Black voters. At the same time, Mr. Trump is aggressively seeking to reshape the state’s political landscape by ousting Republicans whom he considers unwilling to do his bidding or to adopt his false claims of election fraud. He is supporting a challenger to Mr. Raffensperger in next year’s primary, and has been courting possible candidates to run against the Republican governor, Brian Kemp. One Trump ally, former Senator David Perdue, is weighing such a run, while another, the former football star Herschel Walker, is eyeing a Senate bid. (A new governor would not have direct power to pardon, which in Georgia is delegated to a state board.)Instead of impaneling a special grand jury, Ms. Willis could submit evidence to one of two grand juries currently sitting in Fulton County, a longtime Democratic stronghold that encompasses much of Atlanta. But the county has a vast backlog of more than 10,000 potential criminal cases that have yet to be considered by a grand jury — a result of logistical complications from the coronavirus pandemic and, Ms. Willis has argued, inaction by her predecessor, Paul Howard, whom she replaced in January.By contrast, a special grand jury, which by Georgia statute would include 16 to 23 members, could focus solely on the potential case against Mr. Trump and his allies. Ms. Willis is likely to soon take the step, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the decision is not final. Though such a jury could issue subpoenas, Ms. Willis would need to return to a regular grand jury to seek criminal indictments.Ms. Willis’s office declined to comment; earlier this year, in an interview with The New York Times, she said, “Anything that is relevant to attempts to interfere with the Georgia election will be subject to review.”Aides to Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment; in February, a spokesman called the Fulton County inquiry “the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump.”Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, wrote in a new book about Mr. Trump’s asking him to “find” more votes: “I felt then — and still believe today — that this was a threat.”Ron Harris/Associated PressMr. Raffensperger made his view of Mr. Trump’s election meddling clear in a book released this month, on Election Day: “For the office of the secretary of state to ‘recalculate’ would mean we would somehow have to fudge the numbers. The president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong, and I was not going to do that,” he wrote.Of Mr. Trump’s call, Mr. Raffensperger wrote, “I felt then — and still believe today — that this was a threat.”A 114-page analysis of potential issues in the case was released last month by the Brookings Institution, with authors including Donald Ayer, a deputy attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration, and Norman Eisen, who was a special counsel to President Barack Obama. The report concluded that Mr. Trump’s postelection conduct in Georgia put him “at substantial risk of possible state charges,” including racketeering, election fraud solicitation, intentional interference with performance of election duties and conspiracy to commit election fraud.Mr. Trump’s ongoing commentary about what took place in Georgia may not be helping his cause. In September, he held a rally in Perry, Ga., attended by thousands of followers, as well as Mr. Walker and Representative Jody Hice, who is running against Mr. Raffensperger.At the rally, Mr. Trump recalled how he phoned Mr. Kemp, who refused his entreaties to intervene.“Brian, listen,” Mr. Trump said he told the governor. “You have a big election-integrity problem in Georgia. I hope you can help us out and call a special election, and let’s get to the bottom of it for the good of the country.”The Brookings authors asserted that these comments could help prosecutors establish “intent” to convince lawmakers to commit election fraud — a crucial hurdle in proving a solicitation case against Mr. Trump.“I think he worsened his exposure with those comments,” Mr. Eisen said. “The mere fact of his conversation with Kemp is evidence of solicitation of election fraud, because Trump’s demand was based on falsehoods. By commenting on it further at the rally, he offered the prosecution free admissions about the content of that exchange.”Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 6A monthslong campaign. More

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Donald Trump Shouldn’t Be Underestimated

      by

      Like most Democrats, I initially underestimated Donald Trump. In 2015, I founded a super PAC dedicated to electing Hillary Clinton. Through all the ups and downs of the campaign, I didn’t once imagine that Americans would vote Mr. Trump in.He was an obvious pig (see the “Access Hollywood” tapes), a fraud (multiple failed businesses and bankruptcies) and a cheat (stiffing mom-and-pop vendors). Not to mention the blatant racism and misogyny. About the outcome, I was spectacularly wrong.Once he was in office, I misread Mr. Trump again. Having worked inside the conservative movement for many years, I found his policies familiar: same judges, same tax policy, same deregulation of big business, same pandering to the religious right, same denial of science. Of course, there were the loopy tweets, but still I regarded Mr. Trump as only a difference of degree from what I had seen from prior Republican presidents and candidates, not a difference of kind.When a raft of books and articles appeared warning that the United States was headed toward autocracy, I dismissed them as hyperbolic. I just didn’t see it. Under Mr. Trump, the sky didn’t fall.My view of Mr. Trump began to shift soon after the November election, when he falsely claimed the election was rigged and refused to concede. In doing so, Mr. Trump showed himself willing to undermine confidence in the democratic process, and in time he managed to convince nearly three-quarters of his supporters that the loser was actually the winner.Then came the Capitol Hill insurrection, and, later, proof that Mr. Trump incited it, even hiring a lawyer, John Eastman, who wrote a detailed memo that can only be described as a road map for a coup. A recent Senate investigation documented frantic efforts by Mr. Trump to bully government officials to overturn the election. And yet I worry that many Americans are still blind, as I once was, to the authoritarian impulses that now grip Mr. Trump’s party. Democrats need to step up to thwart them.Are Democrats up for such a tough (and expensive) fight? Many liberal voters have taken a step back from politics, convinced that Mr. Trump is no longer a threat. According to research conducted for our super PAC, almost half of women in battleground states are now paying less attention to the political news.But in reality, the last election settled very little. Mr. Trump not only appears to be preparing for a presidential campaign in 2024; he is whipping up his supporters before the 2022 midterms. And if Democrats ignore the threat he and his allies pose to democracy, their candidates will suffer next fall, imperiling any chance of meaningful reform in Congress.Going forward, we can expect bogus claims of voter fraud, and equally bogus challenges to legitimate vote counts, to become a permanent feature of Republican political strategy. Every election Republicans lose will be contested with lies, every Democratic win delegitimized. This is poison in a democracy.As of late September, 19 states had enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for their citizens to vote. The Republican National Committee’s “election integrity director” says the party will file lawsuits earlier and more aggressively than they did in 2020. Trump wannabe candidates like Glenn Youngkin, running for Virginia governor, are currying favor with the Republican base by promoting conspiracy theories suggesting that Virginia’s election may be rigged.More alarmingly, Republicans in swing states are purging election officials, allowing pro-Trump partisans to sabotage vote counts. In January, an Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill that would permit Republican legislators to overrule the certification of elections that don’t go their way. In Georgia, the legislature has given partisan election boards the power to “slow down or block” election certifications. Why bother with elections?Democrats now face an opposition that is not a normal political party, but rather a party that is willing to sacrifice democratic institutions and norms to take power.The legislation Democrats introduced in Congress to protect our democracy against such assaults would have taken an important step toward meeting these challenges. But on Wednesday, Republicans blocked the latest version of the legislation, and given the lack of unanimity among Democrats on the filibuster, they may well have succeeded in killing the last hope for any federal voting rights legislation during this session of Congress.Having underestimated Mr. Trump in the first place, Democrats shouldn’t underestimate what it will take to counter his malign influence now. They need a bigger, bolder campaign blueprint to save democracy that doesn’t hinge on the whims of Congress.We should hear more directly from the White House bully pulpit about these dire threats. The Jan. 6 investigators should mount a full-court press to get the truth out. Funding voting rights litigation should be a top priority.Where possible, Democrats should sponsor plebiscites to overturn anti-democratic laws passed by Republicans in states. They should underwrite super PACs to protect incumbent election officials being challenged by Trump loyalists, even if it means supporting reasonable Republicans. Donations should flow into key governor and secretary of state races, positions critical to election certification.In localities, Democrats should organize poll watching. Lawyers who make phony voting claims in court should face disciplinary action in state bar associations. The financiers of the voting rights assault must be exposed and publicly shamed.The good news is that liberals do not have to copy what the right is doing with its media apparatus — the font of falsehoods about voter fraud and a stolen election — to win over voters. Democrats can leapfrog the right with significant investments in streaming video, podcasting, newsletters and innovative content producers on growing platforms like TikTok, whose audiences dwarf those of cable news networks like Fox News.Issues like racial justice, the environment and immigration are already resonating online with audiences Democrats need to win over, such as young people, women and people of color. Democratic donors have long overlooked efforts to fund the media, but with so much of our politics playing out on that battlefield, they can no longer afford to.David Brock (@davidbrockdc) is the founder of Media Matters for America and American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic super PAC.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Election Workers in Georgia Are Fired for Shredding Voter Registration Forms

      by

      The office was already under fire from Trump supporters, who passed sweeping legislation that could lead to a takeover by the Republican-controlled State Legislature.The elections office in Georgia’s heavily Democratic Fulton County said on Monday that two workers had been fired for shredding voter registration forms, most likely adding fuel to a Republican-led investigation of the office that critics call politically motivated.The workers, at the Fulton County Board of Elections, were dismissed on Friday after other employees saw them destroying registration forms awaiting processing before local elections in November, the county elections director, Richard Barron, said.Both the county district attorney and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s chief elections official, were asked to conduct inquiries into the matter, the chairman of the Fulton County Commission, Robb Pitts, said in a statement.But it was Mr. Raffensperger who first revealed the allegations of shredded registration forms, issuing a blistering news release demanding that the Justice Department investigate “incompetence and malfeasance” in the agency. “After 20 years of documented failure in Fulton County elections, Georgians are tired of waiting to see what the next embarrassing revelation will be,” he said.His declaration only underscored the political implications of the document-shredding charges, which would almost certainly have been less freighted in any other election office. Fulton County officials did not say how many forms were shredded, but Mr. Raffensperger put the total at about 300 in a county with 800,000 voters on the rolls.While the charges of wrongdoing surfaced on Friday, it was unclear when the actual destruction of registration forms might have occurred.Mr. Raffensperger, who won national attention for rejecting former President Donald J. Trump’s request to “find” enough ballots to overturn President Biden’s narrow win in the state, faces a difficult primary race next spring against a rival endorsed by Mr. Trump. The Fulton County elections office, meanwhile, has become the object of fury by Trump supporters who baselessly claim that Mr. Biden’s win in the state was illegitimate.Some supporters are suing to conduct yet another review of the presidential vote in Fulton County, which includes a broad swath of metropolitan Atlanta and where 73 percent of voters favored Mr. Biden. The statewide Georgia vote has been counted three times with zero evidence of fraud.The Republican-dominated State Legislature approved legislation this spring that gives it effective control of the State Election Board, and empowers the board to investigate legislators’ complaints about local election bodies. Fulton County was quickly selected for an inquiry that eventually could replace the elections board with a temporary superintendent who would have sweeping powers to oversee the vote.Voting rights advocates and Democrats statewide have cast the inquiry as a first step toward a pro-Trump takeover of election machinery in the county most crucial to Democratic hopes in future elections.“I don’t think there’s another state in the union that has a State Election Board with the power to turn a nonpartisan elections office into a partisan arm of the secretary of state’s office,” Mr. Barron, the Fulton County elections director, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The county’s performance in elections has been mixed. Primary elections last year were plagued by long lines, and county elections have long been the subject of complaints. A report by a state-appointed monitor concluded that elections there were “sloppy” but it found no evidence of “dishonesty, fraud or intentional malfeasance.”The elections board has cited recent improvements, such as revised training manuals and newly hired election managers, as evidence that it is addressing complaints. But the disclosure on Monday gives critics new ammunition at a time when the coming November election, for Atlanta’s mayor and City Council, is being seen as a test of the board’s competence.Mary Norwood, a Fulton resident who narrowly lost two races for Atlanta mayor, has been a longstanding critic of the board. She said she favored an inquiry into the shredding allegations.“If you have two employees who are terminated by the elections director, that certainly prompts an investigation and analysis,” she said. “It’s critical that we get this right.” More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Criminal inquiry into Trump’s Georgia election interference gathers steam

      by

      GeorgiaCriminal inquiry into Trump’s Georgia election interference gathers steamThe disgraced former president faces a range of possible charges – including conspiracy and election fraud Peter Stone in WashingtonTue 5 Oct 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 5 Oct 2021 05.28 EDTDonald Trump is facing increasing legal scrutiny in the crucial battleground state of Georgia over his attempt to sway the 2020 election there, and that heat is now overlapping with investigations in Congress looking at the former president’s efforts to subvert American democracy.A criminal investigation into Trump’s 2 January call prodding Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “just find” him 11,780 votes to block Joe Biden’s win in the state is making headway. The Georgia district attorney running the inquiry is now also sharing information with the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.Meanwhile, a justice department taskforce investigating threats to election officials nationwide has launched inquiries in Georgia, where election officers and workers received death threats or warnings of violence, including some after Trump singled out one official publicly for not backing his baseless fraud claims.Despite these investigations, Trump is still pushing bogus fraud claims in Georgia. Trump wrote to Raffensperger in September asking him to decertify the election results, which is impossible, and with an eye on the 2022 elections is trying to oust Raffensperger, as well as the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and other top Republicans who defied his demands to block Biden’s win.Former justice department officials and voting rights advocates say Trump’s conspiratorial attacks on Georgia’s election results, and the threats to public officials, need to be investigated diligently, and prosecuted if warranted by law enforcement, to protect election integrity and public officials.Experts add that Trump’s alarming refusal to accept the Georgia election outcome and seek revenge on Republican officials who ignored his baseless fraud charges may affect a few pivotal 2022 races. His efforts may also encourage extremism and restrictions on minority and other voting rights similar to ones the Georgia legislature enacted this year.Veteran DoJ officials and prosecutors say the criminal inquiry launched by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, into Trump’s call to Raffensperger and other efforts Trump made to overturn the Georgia results, seems well grounded, with ample public evidence. But they said it will probably take some time before Willis decides whether to bring charges.Willis has said prosecutors are scrutinizing “potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration”.The Georgia investigation’s merits were bolstered in late September by the release of a well-documented 107-page study from the Brookings Institution detailing Trump’s high-pressure drive to block Biden’s win in the state. The report concluded that Trump faced “substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes”.Boasting extensive documentation from the public record, the report notes that Trump’s broad effort to nullify the outcome in Georgia included personal contacts with the governor, the state attorney general and the secretary of state’s chief investigator.“Trump engaged in a pattern of repeated personal communications aimed at altering the vote count and making himself the winner in Georgia,” Donald Ayer, one of several authors of the Brookings report and a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, said in an interview.“He did so in the absence of any even arguable evidence of voting or counting irregularities. Unless there are other presently unknown facts that would explain it, this conduct appears to satisfy the requirements of a number of Georgia criminal statutes.”To further the Georgia inquiry, Willis reportedly has in recent weeks turned to the House select committee looking into the 6 January attack on the Capitol to share documents and information that could assist her work.Willis’s outreach to the congressional committee doesn’t surprise some expert observers.“Her resources to address local crime are already taxed and any investigative steps taken on Capitol Hill means her likely marathon of a case against the former president may be a little closer to the finish line,” Michael J Moore, a former Georgia prosecutor and Democrat, said in an interview.The district attorney’s progress was underscored by Raffensperger telling the Daily Beast in August that Fulton county investigators had “asked us for documents, they’ve talked to some of our folks, and we’ll cooperate fully”.According to the news outlet, at least four people in Raffensperger’s office have been interviewed, including attorney Ryan Germany and the chief operating officer, Gabriel Sterling.On another legal front, the FBI has begun interviews in recent weeks with several Georgia election officials about death threats and other dangerous warnings they received in the months after the election from Trump backers suggesting falsely that Georgia officials were involved in election rigging.For instance, Richard Barron, who heads the Fulton county board of elections, told the Guardian he was interviewed by two FBI agents in early September and informed them about two death threats he received, including one in the summer “full of white supremacist language” which warned he would be “served lead”.“I hope the FBI makes some arrests,” Barron added. “People need to be held accountable for making threats against public officials.” Barron noted that threats against him and his majority Black staff rocketed after the election, when Democrats also won two Senate seats in the historically red-leaning state. Threats against Barron escalated further after Trump singled him out by name at a rally, he said.Former justice department prosecutors say that the taskforce looking into these threats has to be aggressive. “Absent rigorous law enforcement, responsible citizens will shy away from seeking these types of important public jobs, especially if they feel their families will be under threat,” said Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the fraud section at DoJ.But even with these inquiries heating up, Trump has continued to spread his false claims about the election results, as he did at a campaign-style rally in Perry, Georgia, on 25 September, where a few of his favored Georgia candidates spoke –including Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to defeat Raffensperger in a primary contest.Trump’s drive to retaliate against Republican politicians who defied his efforts to overturn Biden’s Georgia win has dismayed some veteran party operatives who see them as counterproductive.“I think the Trump presence in Georgia has not been good for the GOP’s politics the last two years,” said Republican lobbyist Ed Rogers, who hails from Alabama. “Politics is about addition, and vengeance is not consistent with addition.”TopicsGeorgiaDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      As Washington Stews, State Legislatures Increasingly Shape American Politics

      by

      From voting rights to the culture wars, state legislatures controlled by Republicans are playing a role well beyond their own state borders.With the release of the 2020 census last month, the drawing of legislative districts that could in large part determine control of Congress for the next decade heads to the nation’s state legislatures, the heart of Republican political power.Increasingly, state legislatures, especially in 30 Republican-controlled states, have seized an outsize role for themselves, pressing conservative agendas on voting, Covid-19 and the culture wars that are amplifying partisan splits and shaping policy well beyond their own borders.Indeed, for a party out of power in Washington, state legislatures have become enormous sources of leverage and influence. That is especially true for rural conservatives who largely control the legislatures in key states like Wisconsin, Texas and Georgia and could now lock in a strong Republican tilt in Congress and cement their own power for the next decade. The Texas Legislature’s pending approval of new restrictions on voting is but the latest example.“This is in many ways genuinely new, because of the breadth and scope of what’s happening,” said Donald F. Kettl, a scholar of state governance at the University of Texas at Austin. “But more fundamentally, the real point of the spear of Trumpism is appearing at the state and local level. State legislatures not only are keeping the flame alive, but nurturing and growing it.”He added that the aggressive role played by Republican legislatures had much further to run.“There’s all this talk of whether or not Republicans are a party that has any future at this point,” he said, “but the reality is that Republicans not only are alive and well, but living in the state legislatures. And they’re going to be pushing more of this forward.”The next battle, already underway in many states, is over the drawing of congressional and state legislative districts. Republicans control 26 of the legislatures that will draw political maps, compared with 13 for Democrats. (Other states have nonpartisan commissions that draw legislative districts, or have just one seat.)Democrats have embraced their own causes, passing laws to expand voting rights, raise minimum wages and tighten controls on firearms in the 18 states where they control the legislatures.But Republican legislatures are pursuing political and ideological agendas that dwarf those of their opponents. This year’s legislative sessions have spawned the largest wave of anti-abortion legislation since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Many Republican legislatures have seized power from Democratic-leaning cities and counties on issues including policing, the coronavirus and tree preservation. They have made base-energizing issues like transgender rights and classroom teaching on race centerpieces of debate.Most important, they have rewritten election and voting laws in ways that largely hinder Democratic-leaning voters and give Republicans more influence over how elections are run — and, critics say, how they are decided. And in some states, they are eyeing their own versions of the Arizona State Senate’s brazenly partisan review of the 2020 vote, a new and, to many, dangerous attack on the nonpartisan underpinnings of American elections.Anti-abortion demonstrators outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin in May.Sergio Flores/Getty Images One reason for the new activism is obvious: With Republicans out of power in Washington and Congress largely gridlocked, states are the party’s prime venues for setting policy.“I don’t know how long it’s been since Congress has even passed a budget,” said Bryan Hughes, a Republican state senator who sponsored Texas’ latest voting bill. “So yes, clearly more responsibilities have fallen to states.”Many Democratic legislators say Republicans are shirking those responsibilities.“We’re one of four states with no pre-K education,” said State Representative Ilana Rubel, an Idaho Democrat. “We have a major housing crisis. We have a property-tax crisis. Those were the things we thought would be discussed. Instead, we found ourselves in a Fox News fever dream where all they wanted to do was get into these manufactured crises at the national level.”The national role being played by state legislatures reflects in part the sorting of Americans into opposing partisan camps. Thirty years ago, 15 of the 50 state legislatures were split between Republican and Democratic control. Today, only Minnesota’s House and Senate are divided.And the system favors partisanship. Few pay attention to state assembly races, so roughly four in 10 seats nationwide are uncontested in general elections, said Gary Moncrief, a co-author of the standard work on state politics, “Why States Matter.”“That means the real decisions are made in the primaries,” he said, where voters tend to be hard-liners.Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill in March that would bar transgender athletes from competing on female sports teams.Rogelio V. Solis/Associated PressAt first blush, state assemblies seem ill-suited to wield influence. Most are part-time affairs run by citizen lawmakers. But the minor-league image is not entirely deserved. State lawmakers control $2 trillion a year in spending and have a plate of issues, from prisons to schools to the opioid crisis, that can get lost in the whir of Washington politics.And increasingly, top Republican strategists and well-funded conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, have poured in money and resources and policy prescriptions, figuring that legislation with no chance of getting through Congress could sail through friendly statehouses.“From where I stand, they have a far greater impact on the life of ordinary citizens than Congress,” Tim Storey, the executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures, said of the state-level bodies.If there is one area where state legislatures have the potential to shape the nation’s politics to a degree that goes well beyond established boundaries, it is voting.Following former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, at least 18 states tightened voting rules, often in ways that most affect Democratic-leaning constituencies. Contractors examined and recounted ballots as part of an audit ordered by the Arizona Senate in Phoenix in May.Pool photo by Matt YorkMost glaringly, they also gave the party more power over the mechanisms of administering elections and counting ballots. Arkansas empowered the State Elections Board to investigate local elections and “take corrective action” against suspected irregularities, purportedly to give Republicans a fair shake. Iowa and other states would levy fines and even criminal penalties for missteps by local election officials, raising concerns that punishments could be used for partisan gain.Georgia’s legislature gave itself control over most appointments to the State Election Board and allowed it to investigate and replace local election officials. Already, lawmakers are seeking an inquiry in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold, although procedural hurdles in the law raise questions about how easily it could be used for partisan ends.The legislature also gave elected county commissioners sole power to appoint local election board members, a change that has already enabled the removal of at least 10 members of those boards, most of them Democrats.Republicans say they are seeking to deter fraud and ensure that elections are better run. Many experts and most Democrats call the laws worrying, given efforts by G.O.P. legislators and officials in at least 17 states to halt or overturn the election of President Biden and their continuing calls for often partisan ballot reviews of long-settled elections. Many fear that such failed tactics are being retooled to succeed as early as 2024.“That is the absolutely last step toward an authoritarian system,” said Thomas E. Mann, a co-author of two books about the implications of Republicans’ rightward drift, “and they’re just hellbent on getting there.”The Republican speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, David Ralston, rejected that. Claims that his state’s laws open back doors to sway election results, he said, amount to “hysteria.”Compared to voting laws in Democratic bastions like New York or Delaware, he said, “we’re much more ahead of the game.” And while Republican claims of fraud dominated Georgia’s 2020 elections, he noted that the voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, who ran as a Democrat, had also refused to accept her loss in the 2018 race for governor, claiming voter suppression.Democrats from the Georgia House protested a restrictive voting law outside the State Capitol in March.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesLawmakers also pushed through legislation overriding or banning actions by local officials, generally urban Democrats. Among the targets were measures like mask requirements and proposals to reduce police department budgets in response to last summer’s unrest.Some see brakes on how far to the right Republican legislatures can go.Opponents are already taking the latest Republican initiatives to court. The federal Justice Department has sued to block portions of Georgia’s new voting law and has warned that partisan meddling with election reviews like the one in Arizona risk violating federal laws.Lawyers for Democrats and voting-rights advocates are taking aim at other voting measures. And in some states, Democratic governors like Roy Cooper of North Carolina are serving as counterbalances to Republican legislatures.“This state would look very, very different if Roy Cooper had not been governor,” said Christopher Cooper, a scholar of state politics at Western Carolina University, who is not related to the governor. “He’s vetoed more bills than any governor in North Carolina history.”Others doubt vetoes and court decisions will settle much. “I don’t see any solution from litigation,” said Richard Briffault, a Columbia University expert on state legislation. “If there’s going to be a change, it’s going to be through the political process.”And some say legislatures have the power to enact policy and a base that revels in what a few years back seemed like overreach. Why would they stop?“This has become the new normal,” said Trey Martinez Fischer, one of the Texas Democrats who fled the state in July to block passage of the restrictive voting bill. “And I would expect, with a Biden administration and a Democratic Congress, that we’re likely to see more.”Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting. More