A new voting law in Georgia makes it illegal to give water to people waiting in line to vote.
A bill in Arizona would criminalize bad handwriting.
And legislation is speeding toward passage in Texas that would allow partisan judges to simply toss out entire election results with no real evidence of voter fraud whatsoever.
These laws are part of a coordinated attack on the right to vote by Republicans that civil rights advocates are calling “Jim Crow 2.0,” all based on former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen and aimed at allowing Republicans to win the 2022 midterms and ultimately the presidency by any means necessary.
This is a red-alert crisis for our democracy, and it’s compounded by the fact that local newsrooms have been gutted by layoffs, meaning that some of the most blatant attacks on voting might not even get reported.
In Washington, D.C., the war is being waged not only by Republicans but also by conservative Democrats clinging to the filibuster to block voting rights reforms demanded by an overwhelming majority of the country. The Intercept is reporting on the seedy underbelly of billionaire dollars behind this bipartisan obstruction — including our exclusive report on a leaked recording of Sen. Joe Manchin collaborating with top donors on their strategy to preserve the filibuster.
As The Intercept’s D.C. bureau chief, I can tell you there is no more important story to cover for the survival of our democracy — and reader support is a key part of how we fund this critical reporting.
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Just since the start of this year, nearly 400 voter suppression bills have been introduced across 48 states. At least 22 new laws restricting access to the vote have actually become law, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Facing an onslaught of voter suppression bills, we need reporters to pore over hundreds of bills all over the country. We need to interview local advocates, voting rights experts, and elected officials. And we need the capacity to follow up on leads and track down reports of voting rights violations that no one has reported yet.
But in recent years, the journalism industry has been in a tailspin. Between 2004 and 2018, 1,800 newspapers closed, and just a few weeks ago, 47 journalists at the award-winning HuffPost were laid off due to a sharp decline in revenues.
The Intercept is one of the shrinking number of investigative journalism publications with the expertise, resources, and courage to expose the attacks on our democracy. But we need your help.
Thank you,
