There is also a Republican push to junk a measure that kicks in this year: allowing Virginian to register and vote on the same day. It’s been spiked in the Senate, the remaining, albeit tenuous, redoubt of Democratic authority. Those other Republican bills rolling back voting rights, assuming they clear the House, will likely perish in the Senate, with its one-seat Democratic majority.
More insidious, if only because it’s being considered concurrent with the annual month-long reflection on Black history: Republican bills that ban teaching Black history. Not all of it, Republicans argue, only parts deemed by the thought police, be they noisy parents or nosy politicians, to be “inherently divisive” — whatever that means. Senate Democrats have already consigned the bill to the ash heap of legislative history.
That loss, nonetheless, could be a win for its Senate sponsor, Republican Jen Kiggans of Virginia Beach. She’s running for Congress in Hampton Roads’ 2nd District, angling to challenge Democratic incumbent Elaine Luria. Kiggans has to get through the primary. Comporting herself as the culture warrior could reassure conservatives. Maybe that’s what Kiggans meant in describing herself as a “normal Republican” in her kickoff video.
And speaking to her election-integrity bona fides — a must for Trump voters — Kiggans is carrying a measure that makes it tougher to harvest the graveyard vote. Her bill requiring registrars to purge the dead from voter rolls every week rather than monthly passed the Senate on a lopsided bipartisan vote. It now goes to the House.
