Thread by @JeffJacksonNC

In the state legislature, I serve with many members who are fully convinced the last election was stolen.

But - just as important - I serve with many members who know it *wasn’t* stolen but would be fine using that myth as cover to pass laws to help them win elections.

/thread/

And that’s what’s happening across the country.

A bunch of state legislators who know better are using the myth of the stolen election as cover to give themselves more power by taking it away from you, the voters.

This is about voter turnout. Not voter fraud.

Last week, we talked about the need to renew the Voting Rights Act based on the history of North Carolina’s state legislature abusing its authority to cement the majority party’s power.

But there’s a much wider case to be made for renewing the VRA, and we’re seeing it play out nationwide as we speak.

Over the last few weeks, state legislatures across the country have started their annual legislative sessions.

That comes with a huge wave of bill filing. All kinds of bills.

But we can already see a clear surge in one particular kind:

Bills restricting voting.

Hundreds have been filed across dozens of states.

We’ve already seen some of those bills become law in Georgia. Almost certainly, that’s just the beginning.

We’ll fight them off as best we can, state by state.

But what we really need is a Voting Rights Act that can defend voters from these kinds of attacks.

A strong first step would be passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

That would make it much more difficult for state legislators to take voting power away from you and pocket it for themselves.

Looking ahead, we should all fully expect Mitch McConnell to use the filibuster to block any effort to renew the Voting Rights Act.

And we should acknowledge that using the filibuster to protect states that are running offense on voters - particularly Black voters and other voters of color - is literally Jim Crow behavior.

It cannot be allowed.

Doing the right thing here means standing up for your rights as a voter - and we need to move quickly.

- Jeff

P.S. - By the way, odds are someone reading this believes the election *was* stolen, so here’s a list of 44 sources - many of them supporters of the former president - that I put together explaining that this is not the case: bit.ly/3mkhd7e