EX-TRUMP ADVISER TAKES BIG ROLE IN VOTER SUPPRESSION PLOT

A GOP lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump on his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results is now playing a central role coordinating the Republican effort to tighten voting laws around the country, Nicholas Riccardi reported for Associated Press (AP).

Cleta Mitchell, a longtime Republican lawyer and advocate for conservative causes, was among the Trump advisers on a January phone call in which Trump asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to declare him, and not Democrat Joe Biden, the winner of the battleground state.

Now, Mitchell has taken the helm of two separate efforts to push for tighter state voting laws and to fight Democratic efforts to expand access to the ballot at the federal level. She is also advising state lawmakers charged with crafting the voting restriction proposals.

And, she said Friday, she is in regular contact with Trump. Republicans only make up 29% of registered voters in the US, with hundreds of thousands more leaving the party to join the Democrats or vote as independents.

Trump’s false claims of fraud have fueled a wave of new voting restrictions. More than 250 proposed voting restrictions have been proposed this year, mostly by Republican lawmakers, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

On Thursday, Georgia’s GOP governor signed into law a measure requiring voters to present ID to vote by mail, giving the GOP-controlled state legislature new powers over local election boards and outlawing providing food or water to people waiting in line to vote.

Biden on Friday condemned it as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.”

In response, Democrats have stepped up the push for a massive federal election overhaul bill. That proposal, known as H.R. 1, would effectively neuter state-level voter ID laws, allow anyone to vote by mail if they wanted to, and automatically register citizens to vote.

Republicans view that as an encroachment on state control over elections and say it is designed to give Democrats an advantage.

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