Texas, Tennessee, and Mississippi — all led by Republican governors and legislatures — are pursuing efforts to diminish local control over policing, elections, and the courts in liberal and racially diverse areas.
All of the proposed legislation targets issues that are particularly sensitive for marginalized areas, like elections and criminal justice. In Mississippi and Texas in particular, the legislation is targeted specifically at localities where people of color are the majority. Efforts in all three states indicate an alarming trend, in which Republican leadership is attempting new strategies to further erode democracy, particularly in majority-minority areas and Democratic strongholds.
Some of these efforts, like the state government’s push to control policing and the court system in Jackson, Mississippi’s majority-Black and underserved capitol, have been in the works for months. Tennessee will eliminate community boards that oversee local police forces as of July 1.
In Texas, a bill which has already passed the state Senate would remove Harris County’s elections administrator and hand those duties over to the tax assessor-collector and the county clerk, the Texas Tribune reported earlier this month. Another would allow the secretary of state to call a new election in the case that ballots aren’t available, according to the Washington Post. Yet another bill would allow the secretary of state to appoint a marshal to investigate voting complaints.
“I think it would make a mockery of our democracy,” Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Democrat, told the Post. “It would be a throwback to the forties and fifties.”
Republican Senator Paul Bettencourt said his initial bill was written to include counties with populations larger than 1 million, but that a study by his office found that Harris County was the only such municipality that repeatedly had election issues, according to the Tribune. Harris County did not create an…
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