The turnout (returned ballots) was so much higher when every registered voter received a ballot in the mail in states that don't usually vote this way (COVID-19 delivered some interesting discoveries in 2020, voting interest is one of them.) The states that do vote this way show higher turnouts consistently.

The obstacles that GOP legislatures are putting in front of voter access to the ballot are clearly because when more people vote the GOP parties tend to lose, and instead of making their party more welcoming and reasonable, they are instead trying to block access to voting at all. In a nutshell.

My question is - these legislatures aren't writing all of these new proposed laws themselves, they're getting them from conservative organizations that want to see the reduced voter outcome. What organizations are doing that? We know about the Federalist Society "vetting" possible judge candidates, that (until recently) the National Rifle Association (NRA) provided sample gun-proliferation legislation; what group writes the sample legislation that is being picked up now?

I did my own search on that and found the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). So did The Atlantic, referring to them as A shadowy organization uses corporate contributions to sell prepackaged conservative bills -- such as Florida's Stand Your Ground statute -- to legislatures across the country.

More about ALEC from Wikipedia.

USA Today and The Arizona Republic also found answers - corporations are writing sample legislation favorable to their own business.

ABOUT THIS REPORT
This story was produced as part of a collaboration between USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. More than 30 reporters across the country were involved in the two-year investigation, which identified copycat bills in every state. The team used a unique data-analysis engine built on hundreds of cloud computers to compare millions of words of legislation provided by LegiScan.

COPY, PASTE, LEGISLATE
Published — April 4, 2019

You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead.
Rob O’Dell

Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks.

Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called “model” bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them.

A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic?and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.

USA TODAY?and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than?2,100?of those bills were signed into law.

The investigation examined nearly 1 million bills in all 50 states and Congress using a computer algorithm developed to detect similarities in language. That search – powered by the equivalent of 150 computers?that ran nonstop for months – compared known model legislation with?bills introduced by?lawmakers.

The phenomenon of copycat legislation is far larger. In a separate analysis, the Center for Public Integrity identified tens of thousands of bills with identical phrases, then traced the origins of that language in dozens of those bills across the country.

Model bills passed into law have made?it harder for injured consumers to sue corporations. They’ve called for taxes on sugar-laden drinks. They’ve limited access to abortion and restricted the rights of protesters.

This is what is going on, and this is what BB was hoping no one would bother to post. Get pissed off enough and you can wipe the floor with the bugger.