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      It’s Not Too Early to Start Courting Latino Voters

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      Democrats will need their votes to keep control of the Senate and House after the midterms.Latino voters helped deliver the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020 by securing key victories in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But Latino voters also moved an average of 9 percentage points from Democrats to Republicans in the 2020 elections compared with 2016.In places like Miami-Dade County in Florida and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, that swing spiked to over 20 points. What’s more, seven of the 14 House seats that switched from Democratic to Republican control were in majority-minority districts, many of which had large Latino populations.As we now look ahead to the midterms, it’s likely that many close races will run through states and districts with large Latino populations. Democrats would do well to address their Latino vote problem if they want to keep control of the Senate and House.To understand why Democrats lost congressional races that they should have handily won, my organization Solidarity Strategies took a deeper look at key areas of concern from the general election. We focused on Miami-Dade County and five Texas border counties where Latinos make up a majority of the population.In Florida, Mr. Biden’s campaign, congressional candidates and Democratic super PACs set a state record for campaign spending. In the final 30 days before the general election, combined they spent over $14 million on Spanish-language radio and TV in Miami, according to Federal Election Commission reports. But by then, well over half of Latino voters in Miami had cast their ballots.By contrast, the Trump campaign maintained a consistent line of communication with, and outreach to, the Latino community that went beyond TV advertising starting two years before the 2020 election. Its Spanish-language strategy included in-person canvassing, mail, digital advertising, newspaper ads and a network of influencers who spread disinformation and echoed Donald Trump’s talking points on digital media. The misinformation they peddled was not rebutted by the Democrats until it was too late in the election cycle to make a difference.Many of the same patterns played out in Texas. In the last 60 days before the elections, Democratic candidates and super PACs spent nearly $2 million on advertising in the two Spanish-language media markets in the Rio Grande Valley. While Republicans spent a mere $33,000 in those markets during the same period, they went on to outperform Democrats in these densely Latino counties. This was no stroke of luck, but rather the result of a massive voter mobilization effort a decade in the making.Since the 2000s, organizations like the Libre Initiative, a Latino conservative advocacy group within the Koch political network, have been working tirelessly to promote conservatism in Hispanic communities. Through them, the G.O.P. has built support while providing resources to the Latino community. For example, the Libre Initiative offers English courses, economic empowerment sessions and pathways to citizenship to immigrants throughout the South and Southwest. It also helps them study for driver’s license exams, citizenship tests and the G.E.D.Come election year, Republicans coordinated an aggressive social media campaign, accompanied by canvassing programs, and hosted car parades with well over 500 cars in Texas. They didn’t need to empty their wallets in the final weeks before the elections because they had maintained a constant drumbeat of communication in the area for months.Grass-roots organizations like Lucha did the same for Democrats in states like Arizona. It is among the network of organizations that have put in the work to turn the rising number of Latinos in the state into a force for change. For over a decade, they have campaigned, marched, protested and knocked on doors to organize voters on issues like immigration. They also helped deliver the Latino vote to Mr. Biden in the general election.This brings us to the next problem: Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley are working middle class and rely heavily on jobs in oil and gas plants, border security and other government agencies. The narrative that Democratic candidates spun about immigration reform and eliminating fossil fuels fell flat with these voters.There was no lack of money raised and spent on congressional races nationally. In fact, Democratic candidates, party committees and super PACs out raised and out spent Republicans in almost every race Democrats lost to Republicans in 2020. Yet it is evident that their outreach in these communities was not thoughtful. A cluster of Spanish-language TV ads late in the game will not turn out voters.Super PACs raised and spent over $1 billion on independent expenditures by October 15, 2020. According to Federal Election Commission reports, over 99 percent of that money went through firms that are majority-white owned, and less than 2 percent of it went to Latino-led super PACs. There were few if any people in the room who could point out flaws in the messaging or imagery used in the ads these firms produced.We need to prioritize Latino voters as we do white swing voters, and use every tool at our disposal to initiate and nurture a thoughtful conversation. Democrats then have got to get their message in front of Latinos before they cast ballots, not after. They must work to build trust now, so they can ask for their votes later.The political consulting and campaigning industry has historically been run by white establishment consultants who don’t come from our community. That needs to change. Hiring diverse staff members and consultants to run campaigns, make budgetary decisions, develop regional messaging and flag messaging errors and inconsistencies would be a critical step forward. The Democratic Party and its super PACs should be restructured to include more Latinos in leadership and decision-making positions.If you don’t invest in Latino voters early, don’t be surprised when they don’t show up for you.Chuck Rocha (@ChuckRocha) is the founder of Solidarity Strategies and the president of Nuestro 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

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      A Conversation With Senator Raphael Warnock

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      Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherRepublican-led legislatures are racing to restrict voting rights, in a broad political effort that began in the state of Georgia. To many Democrats, it’s no coincidence that Georgia — once a Republican stronghold — has just elected its first Black senator: Raphael Warnock. Today, we speak to the senator about his path from pastorship to politics, the fight over voting rights and his faith that the old political order is fading away.On today’s episodeAstead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times.Mr. Warnock was previously a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.Getty ImagesBackground readingGeorgia Republicans passed a sweeping law to restrict voting access in the state, making it the first major battleground to overhaul its election system since the turmoil of the 2020 presidential contest.Last year, Mr. Warnock ran for office in a state where people in predominantly Black neighborhoods waited in disproportionately long lines. Several Black leaders have said Georgia’s new law clearly puts a target on Black and brown voters.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Astead W. Herndon contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Theo Balcomb, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Hans Buetow, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Bianca Giaever, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Alix Spiegel, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano and Soraya Shockley.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Laura Kim, Erica Futterman and Shreeya Sinha. More

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      The Fate of Biden’s Agenda Hangs in the Balance

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      And it isn’t all about the filibuster.Every 10 years, after the collection of census data, states are required to redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts to ensure that they remain equal in population.The process — as readers of this newspaper know — is vulnerable to gerrymandering, in which districts are redrawn to give favored parties, office holders or constituencies an advantage in elections.At the moment, Democrats control the House by a slim 219-211 majority, with five seats vacant. The loss of just five seats in 2022 would flip control to the Republican Party, which would then be empowered to block President Biden’s agenda.Both geographically and politically, the deck is stacked against Democrats, forcing the party and its leader to adjust election strategies every 10 years.This time around, states with Republican governors and Republican legislative majorities contain more than twice as many congressional districts as states under full Democratic control.Further compounding Democratic difficulties, Jowei Chen and Jonathan Rodden, political scientists at the University of Michigan and Stanford, write in the 2013 paper “Unintentional Gerrymandering”:In many urbanized states, Democrats are highly clustered in dense central city areas, while Republicans are scattered more evenly through the suburban, exurban, and rural periphery.As a result, according to Chen and Rodden, “when districting plans are completed, Democrats tend to be inefficiently packed in homogeneous districts.”Despite winning the White House and the Senate, Democrats suffered a major setback in 2020 as their plans to wrest control of one or both branches of key state legislatures fell short. Democrats failed to take control of the statehouses in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa and Texas, and of both branches in North Carolina — all states with large congressional delegations.Still, there is hope.First and foremost, Democrats have become competitive in many of the high-growth areas that benefit from redistricting; they have done so by pulling ahead of Republicans among voters with college degrees, who make up a disproportionate share of these prosperous communities.In addition, a total of 18 states have switched from partisan to independent redistricting. And finally, Republican attempts at voter suppression have proven at times to backfire, prompting higher turnout among minorities and increased Democratic Party mobilization.“One might be tempted to think that seat gains largely driven by economic prosperity favor Republicans while seat losses are found in impoverished and declining Democratic areas,” SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor and James G. Gimpel, political scientists at the University of Maryland, write in their Feb. 21 article “Reapportioning the U.S. Congress: The shifting geography of political influence.”In practice, Gaynor and Gimpel argue, Democrats have “adapted most impressively to compete and win in the newly emergent districts in Florida and the Far West,” narrowly eking out victories for control of Congress.As states await census data to guide redistricting, there is one wild card in the mix: the possible enactment of voting rights reform, HR 1 or the For the People Act of 2021 — the measure that passed the House on March 3 on a 220-210 vote, but faces the threat of a filibuster in the Senate.I asked Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard whose specialties include election law, about the bill. He emailed me to say thatThe voting legislation currently before Congress would revolutionize the redistricting process if it passed. It would require all states to use truly independent commissions, effective immediately. Separate from this structural reform, the bill would also include quantitative partisan bias thresholds that maps wouldn’t be allowed to exceed. These thresholds would have real teeth.At the same time, Stephanopoulos continued, the legislation would put the brakes on voter suppression laws:The bill affirmatively requires a series of participation-enhancing policies for congressional elections: automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, at least 15 days of early voting, expanded mail-in voting, restrictions on voter purges, restrictions on photo ID requirements, etc.David Lublin, a political scientist at American University, similarly described the transformative potential of HR1 in an email:The proposed legislation before Congress could have a huge effect in two ways. First, by putting in place a new trigger for the Voting Rights Act, Section 5 would become operative again and the Biden administration could use it to block discriminatory maps as well as an array of laws designed to suppress voting.Second, Lublin continued, by preventingmembers of either party from using district boundaries to entrench their advantage through redistricting. Even though Republicans would undoubtedly benefit from the geographic concentration of Democrats and racial redistricting, it would prevent egregious abuses.In the case of Republican voter suppression laws, Nicholas Valentino and Fabian G. Neuner, political scientists at Michigan and Arizona State Universities, found in their February 2016 paper “Why the Sky Didn’t Fall: Mobilizing Anger in Reaction to Voter ID Laws” thatSurprisingly, empirical evidence for significant demobilization, either in the aggregate or among Democrats specifically, has thus far failed to materialize. We suspect strong emotional reactions to the public debate about these laws may mobilize Democrats, counterbalancing the disenfranchising effect.In an email, Neuner cautioned that “our research is about short-term evocations of anger that may spur mobilization and it is not clear how long such anger can be sustained.”Black voters have proven exceptionally determined in the face of electoral adversity, including Supreme Court rulings weakening the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and voter suppression legislation.Kyle Raze, a graduate student in economics at the University of Oregon, studied turnout patterns in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder. The court declared Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which required jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to get preclearance from the Justice Department for any change in election law, unconstitutional. Shelby opened the door to the enactment of voter suppression measures.Raze, in his February 2021 paper, “Voting Rights and the Resilience of Black Turnout,” writes thatDespite well-founded fears to the contrary, the Shelby decision does not appear to have widened the turnout gap between Black and White voters in previously covered states.Instead, Raze foundan accumulating body of evidence that suggests that voters mobilize in response to increases in the cost of voting when those increases are perceived as threats to the franchise.While 2020 census data is not yet complete, it will determine the specific allocation of House seats to each state. Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, provided The Times with estimates of the number of House seats over which each party will exercise redistricting control. Levitt wrote in an email:It looks like Democrats will control 73 congressional seats this cycle, Republicans will control 188, and 167 will be under split partisan control, plus 7 in states with one district.These numbers represent a considerable improvement for Democrats compared with a decade ago, Levitt observes, when the party “controlled 44 seats, with Republicans controlling 213.”The Gaynor-Gimpel article I discussed earlier describes the shape of old and new districts in past decennial redistricting. In the two most recent reapportionments, based on the 2000 and 2010 census results, clear patterns emerge. More

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      A National Campaign to Restrict Voting

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      Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn the weeks after the 2020 election, Georgia’s Republican leaders emerged as defenders of election integrity, rebuffing demands by former President Trump to overturn the results. But now voting rights in the state are under threat. The Republicans in the state legislature watched as the state flipped for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in decades and two Democrats — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock — won their Senate runoff elections. Their response was a package of voting restrictions. Today, we look at the measures introduced in Georgia and how similar laws may be passed elsewhere in the country. On today’s episodeNick Corasaniti, a domestic correspondent covering national politics for The New York Times. Three Democratic state representatives, Kim Schofield, second from left, Viola Davis and Sandra Scott, at a protest outside the Georgia Capitol as House members debated a bill on voting restrictions last week.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBackground reading Georgia Republicans have moved early in a campaign to rewrite voting rules. Republicans in other states are determined to follow them.The country’s most hotly contested state has calmed down after months of drama, court fights and national attention. But new storms are on the horizon.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Theo Balcomb, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Hans Buetow, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Bianca Giaever, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Alix Spiegel, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano and Soraya Shockley.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Laura Kim, Erica Futterman and Shreeya Sinha. More

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      From Serial: The Improvement Association

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      Listen and follow The Improvement AssociationApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherFrom the makers of Serial: The Improvement Association. In this five-part audio series, join the reporter Zoe Chace as she travels to Bladen County, N.C., to investigate the power of election fraud allegations — even when they’re not substantiated.A few years ago, Bladen County, N.C., made national headlines. In 2018, Mark Harris, a Republican, beat out his Democratic opponent for a congressional seat, but the election was later thrown out and a new election was called after his campaign was investigated over suspicions of absentee-ballot fraud.But according to some local residents, the authorities got it all wrong. They say there’s a powerful group still at work in the county, tampering with elections, bullying voters and stealing votes — a Black advocacy group, the Bladen County Improvement Association. These accusations have never been substantiated, but they persist.Join Zoe Chace as she travels to Bladen County to find out what’s behind all this suspicion. Who exactly is making the accusations? And in small-town politics, where rumors and allegations abound, how can you be sure who is telling the truth?Behind this series:From left, Nancy Updike, producer on this series, and Zoe Chace, reporter on this series. Sandy HonigZoe Chace, the reporter for this series, has been a producer at This American Life since 2015. Before that, she was a reporter for NPR. She loves telling stories about people and politics and people in politics.Nancy Updike, the producer for this series, is a Senior Editor at This American Life and one of the founding producers of the show.Transcripts of each episode of The Improvement Association will be available by the next workday after an episode publishes.The Improvement Association was reported by Zoe Chace; produced by Nancy Updike, with help from Amy Pedulla; edited by Julie Snyder, Sarah Koenig, Neil Drumming and Ira Glass; editorial consulting by R.L. Nave and Tim Tyson; fact-checking and research by Ben Phelan; and sound design and mix by Phoebe Wang.The original score for “The Improvement Association” was written and performed by Kwame Brandt-Pierce.Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Julie Whitaker, Seth Lind, Julia Simon, Nora Keller and Lauren Jackson. More

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      Lara Trump Joins Fox News as a Paid Contributor

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      Fox News just hired a Trump. But not Donald.Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump, is joining the cable channel as a paid on-air contributor, the network announced on Monday. The move was not exactly a surprise, as Ms. Trump acknowledged during a morning appearance on “Fox & Friends.”“I sort of feel like I’ve been an unofficial member of the team for so long,” Ms. Trump told the show’s co-hosts, Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade. “Over the past five years, I would come there so often that the security guards were like, ‘Maybe we should just give you a key.’”Mr. Doocy, Mr. Earhardt and Mr. Kilmeade welcomed their new colleague with an on-air round of applause.Ms. Trump, who is married to the former president’s son Eric, was a frequent guest on Fox News during the 2020 campaign, when she served as a surrogate for her father-in-law. Recently, Ms. Trump floated the possibility of running for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina, her home state. On Monday, she told “Fox & Friends” that she had not “officially made a decision, but hopefully sometime soon.”She is the second member of Donald Trump’s inner circle to join the Fox News payroll in recent weeks. Kayleigh McEnany, the former White House press secretary, signed on this month as a contributor.If Ms. Trump does pursue a run for public office, Fox News policy would require that she and the network cut ties. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, another close ally of Mr. Trump who served as his press secretary, joined Fox News as a contributor in September 2019 after leaving the White House. The network terminated her contract in January after she announced that she would run for governor of Arkansas.During her Monday appearance, Ms. Trump criticized the Biden administration for its handling of immigration policy and offered “100 percent complete credit” to her father-in-law for this year’s national vaccine rollout.Her hiring was the latest example of the revolving door between Fox and Mr. Trump’s circle.Larry Kudlow, a former CNBC anchor who directed Mr. Trump’s National Economic Council, was hired by Fox in January. He has since debuted a weekday Fox Business program and regularly appears as an analyst on Fox News.Previously, Heather Nauert, a former “Fox & Friends” anchor, and John R. Bolton, a Fox News commentator, accepted roles in Mr. Trump’s administration. So did Bill Shine, a former Fox News co-president, who served as Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff. Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former co-host of “The Five” on Fox News, worked as a top official on Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign and is dating the former president’s eldest son, Donald J. Trump Jr.When Mr. Bolton appeared on Fox News in March 2018 shortly after being named Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, he appeared briefly confused about his status at the network. “I think I still am a Fox News contributor,” he told the anchor Martha MacCallum.“No,” Ms. MacCallum replied. “You’re not.” More

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      New Jersey to Extend Early In-Person Voting

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      New Jersey, a state controlled by Democrats, will offer more than a week of early in-person voting for the first time before November’s election.Months after a divisive presidential election pushed voting rights to the fore, the issue has become a key political battlefield.Bills restricting ballot access are moving quickly in Republican-led states even as President Biden and his fellow Democrats in Washington press for passage of the most ambitious voting rights legislation in decades to help blunt their effect.In New Jersey, the Democratic governor, Philip D. Murphy, is about to sign a bill authorizing early in-person voting, sending a clear signal that making it easier to vote is crucial for a healthy democracy.It will be done in a ceremony laden with symbolism: Mr. Murphy will be joined on Tuesday in a videoconference by Stacey Abrams, whose decade-long effort to enroll voters in Georgia helped Mr. Biden win the state and cemented the Democrats’ slim majority in the United States Senate.New Jersey lawmakers’ final approval of two bills that expand voter access were not surprising in a state where Democrats control the State House and Democratic voters outnumber Republican voters by more than one million. And the practice of early in-person voting is hardly novel: New Jersey will become the 25th state to allow voters to cast ballots in person before elections for a period that includes a weekend day.But Thursday’s final votes came on the same day that Georgia became the first major battleground state to restrict voting access since the tumultuous 2020 presidential contest, adopting a law that added voter identification requirements for absentee voting, limited drop boxes and expanded the Legislature’s power over elections.Republicans have already passed a similar law in Iowa, and are moving forward with efforts to limit voting in states including Arizona, Florida and Texas.Mr. Biden, criticizing voting restrictions that appear designed to appease a conservative base still outraged by the results of the presidential election, said that Georgia’s new law made “Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”“What an ironic moment,” said New Jersey Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker, a Democrat who was a prime sponsor of the early-voting legislation. “While New Jersey is doing one thing, Georgia is doing the exact opposite.”New Jersey’s legislation requires each of the state’s 21 counties to open three to seven polling places for machine voting in the days before an election. For the Nov. 2 contest, there would be nine days of early in-person voting, including two weekends, ending the Sunday before Election Day. The bill calls for fewer days of early voting before primaries.“Our accountability over government, opportunities to better our lives and the chance to elect our representatives all depend upon our ability to access the ballot,” said Senator Nia Gill, a Democrat who represents parts of Essex and Passaic Counties and was a sponsor of the bill.Separate legislation that was also approved on Thursday calls for drop boxes for paper vote-by-mail ballots to be spaced out more evenly throughout counties, ensuring that there are access points closer to residential neighborhoods.“Across our nation, there is a concerted effort to limit access to the ballot box among eligible voters,” Mr. Murphy said in a statement. “Those efforts are un-American and fly in the face of the principles that generations of Americans, from soldiers to civil rights activists, have fought for and in many cases given their lives to defend.”Some county elections leaders, while supportive of the intent of the early-voting bill, had urged lawmakers to delay implementation until after November’s election, when the governor and all members of the Legislature are up for re-election. The bill will require most counties to purchase new voting machines and electronic poll books, and could cost upward of $50 million.Some New Jersey Republicans objected to the cost and the timeline for implementing the legislation, which cleared the Assembly earlier this month and passed in the Senate on Thursday, 28 to 8, largely along party lines.Senator Kristin M. Corrado, a Republican and a former county clerk who managed elections in Passaic County for more than seven years, said she supported early in-person voting. But, she said, she voted against the measure mainly out of concern that there would not be enough time before Election Day to update the voter rolls, purchase new machines and sync them to new electronic poll books.“I hope we’re not setting everyone up for failure, but we’re just not there,” she said. “We don’t have the machines. We don’t have the poll books. We don’t have the workers.”Senator Declan O’Scanlon Jr., a Republican who represents much of the Jersey Shore, said he opposed the bill for similar reasons.“Like many things we do in Trenton, we’re doing it incompetently,” he said. “It’s impossible to do it instantly, yet we make no allowance in the bill for any delay.”Still, supporters of expanding voting rights said they were hopeful that county election officials could successfully complete the necessary preparations in seven months.“We applaud the Legislature’s commitment to removing obstacles to the ballot in recognition of the simple truth that our democracy is better when all voices can participate,” Jesse Burns, executive director of the League of Women Voters of New Jersey, said in a statement.Henal Patel, a director at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, a nonprofit that advocates racial and social justice, said the inclusion of voting on two Sundays would encourage more nonwhite churchgoers to cast ballots as part of a nationwide tradition known as “souls to the polls.”“Early in-person voting encourages participation by more people, increases satisfaction, and results in shorter lines on Election Day,” Ms. Patel said in a statement.During the pandemic, voting in New Jersey has occurred primarily with vote-by-mail ballots. Last fall, every registered voter in the state was sent a paper ballot, which could be mailed back or delivered by hand to drop boxes or election offices, resulting in record-setting voter turnout in November.Under the new legislation, drop boxes would be positioned farther apart and efforts would be made to include more in poor communities.“Passing legislation for early voting and allowing more equitable drop-box placement will expand our democracy for New Jersey’s Black voters, who have historically faced obstacles to the ballot,” Richard T. Smith, president of the state chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., said in a statement.Ms. Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia Statehouse, spent a decade building a Democratic political infrastructure in the state, first with her New Georgia Project and then with Fair Fight, the voting rights organization she founded after losing a campaign for governor in 2018.Her efforts contributed to January’s election of two Democratic U.S. senators in Georgia, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, swinging the balance of power in the Senate back to the Democrats.Mr. Zwicker, who represents parts of several counties near Princeton, said he was excited by Ms. Abrams’s expected participation in Tuesday’s bill signing.“If there’s anything good about doing things online, it’s that you can do things like this,” he said. “Talk about a single person changing the course of our country’s history with the work she did in Georgia. I’ll be thrilled to be within the same electrons as her.” More