“The department cited evidence that Black voters were more likely to request absentee ballots in general, more likely to do so in the final days before Election Day, and less likely to meet the new ID requirements. ‘SB 202’s limits on the number of drop boxes that each county may deploy will cause a precipitous decline in drop box availability in the counties that are home to the largest number of Black voters in the State,’ the department also claimed…

“Finally, the Justice Department challenged one of the most infamous provisions of SB 202: a total ban on handing out food or drinks to voters while they wait in line outside polling places. In Georgia’s larger urban areas, long lines are a common enough occurrence at the polls that voting rights groups often hand out supplies so voters can stay in line…

“‘These efforts were frequently run by Black-led community organizations to provide respite to waiting voters at majority-minority polling places, which have been disproportionately plagued by long lines,’ the department noted, suggesting that the ban was intended to ensure that the long lines dissuade Black voters from casting ballots.”
Matt Ford, New Republic

“The Georgia lawsuit is Garland’s warning to other states that election laws that disenfranchise minority voters are vulnerable to challenge… During oral argument in Brnovich, an attorney for the Arizona Republican Party, Michael Carvin, perhaps went beyond what the court was expecting when he answered Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s question about why the party was involved in defending an Arizona law…

“He said the 9th Circuit’s ruling ‘puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us.’ That’s what the DOJ is up against. Bald efforts to win elections by denying people, most often Black people, the right to vote.”
Joyce White Vance, Washington Post

Yet in order to win the case, “[The DOJ will] have to overcome a raft of recent precedents undermining the Voting Rights Act. The most harmful of these cases to the DOJ’s chances of prevailing is Abbott v. Perez (2018), a 5-4 Supreme Court decision handed down along party lines. Perez held that lawmakers accused of acting with racist intent enjoy such a high presumption of racial innocence that few litigants will be able to overcome it…

“As Justice Samuel Alito wrote for his Court in Perez, ‘whenever a challenger claims that a state law was enacted with discriminatory intent, the burden of proof lies with the challenger, not the State.’… the deck is heavily stacked against [the DOJ], no matter how strong their case may be.”
Ian Millhiser, Vox

“In Georgia, at least 10 county election officials, most of them Democrats and half of them Black, have been removed or had their positions eliminated, or are expected to be replaced by Republicans under local ordinances and a bill signed by Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this year… The ouster of local and state election officials is only one aspect of Republican lawmakers' multi-pronged approach to seize more power over elections…  

“A Texas voting package would make it a crime to send an unsolicited ballot application to a voter or to attempt to stop disruptive poll watchers, among other routine election administration functions… North Carolina Republicans passed a bill that would give them the ability to block the Democratic-led elections board from settling lawsuits over ballot access…

“At least 14 states have introduced bills that would seize power from election officials or otherwise limit their authority… ‘This is part and parcel of a very anti-democratic push to make sure that people who vote against you don't get to vote and if they accidentally do, 'Don't worry, we'll throw out their votes.’”
Igor Derysh, Salon