Bipartisan mayors voice criticism of new voting restrictions

In this Dec. 14, 2020, file photo, a voter fills out paperwork before casting a ballot the first day of early voting for the Senate runoff election in Atlanta.

 A bipartisan group of mayors said Tuesday that whatever political differences they might have, they are united in fighting against recent voting restrictions enacted in some Republican-controlled states that they view as an attack on democracy.

The mayors spoke at the National Nonpartisan Conversation on Voting Rights, a three-day conference held in Houston to discuss strategies on promoting voter rights education. A similar conference was first held last year in Denver.

“We are all standing together, Democrats and Republicans… to say that the (voting) infrastructure should be non-partisan. The campaigns can go and do what they do, but the infrastructure, our democracy is non-partisan,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, said on Tuesday, which was also National Voter Registration Day in the U.S. Turner was part of the group of mayors — three Democrats and three Republicans — who co-hosted the event.