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“Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed a massive overhaul of election laws, shortly after the Republican-controlled state legislature approved it. The bill enacts new limitations on mail-in voting, expands most voters' access to in-person early voting and caps a months-long battle over voting in a battleground state.” NPR
Read the full text of the law here. Georgia General Assembly
The right supports the new law, arguing that it is a reasonable effort to improve election security in line with policies in other states.
“The comparison [to Jim Crow laws by Biden] is grotesque… Georgia’s new law leaves in place Sunday voting, a point of contention with earlier proposals, given that black churches have a ‘souls to the polls’ tradition after services. The Legislature, rather, decided to expand weekend early voting statewide, by requiring two Saturdays instead of only one under current law. In total, Georgia offers three weeks of early voting, which began last year on Oct. 12. This is not exactly restrictive: Compare that with early voting that started Oct. 24 last year in New York…
“The new law also leaves in place no-excuses absentee voting. Every eligible Georgia voter will continue to be allowed to request a mail ballot for the sake of simple convenience—or for no reason at all. Again, this is hardly restrictive: More than a dozen states, including Connecticut and Delaware, require mail voters to give a valid excuse…
“[Finally] The law makes ballot drop boxes a permanent part of Georgia’s voting architecture. The terms are tighter than they were during last year’s pandemic emergency, but how is it part of ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ to give absentee voters more options than they had in 2019? The legislation also says applications for mail ballots are due 11 days before the election, instead of four days. If that’s racist, so is the U.S. Postal Service, which urges voters to allow 15 days for two-way delivery.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“In Georgia, ballot drop boxes [were] not part of the law. They were allowed because the governor of Georgia has an existing state of emergency declaration over COVID-19. As a result, the state authorized, by way of the governor's executive order, ballot drop boxes for people to drop off ballots. When the executive order on the emergency declaration goes away, the authorization for [ballot] drop boxes goes away… [The new bill] legislated into law ballot drop boxes…
“[Georgia] law states that if you show up to vote, you must have a photo ID. You must have a driver's license number or the state will give you a free photo ID and you must have that number. What they've done with absentee ballots is instead of examining your signature on an absentee ballot that could change over time, you [now] have to put your driver's license or photo ID number and birthday on the ballot…
“A University of Georgia poll found that a majority of liberals, conservatives, black voters, white voters, men, and women actually supported requiring a photo ID copy be provided to vote absentee. The Republican law does not even go that far — merely requiring a drivers license number or a photo ID number with the photo ID freely provided.”
Erick Erickson, Substack
Regarding the ban on providing food or water to those waiting in line, “Voters can still bring bottled water or other food or beverages with them to stand on line to vote, as people often do when waiting at Disney World or to buy concert tickets or in other public places where people stand on long lines. Voters can still also, if they like, order food; the bill doesn’t stop the Domino’s Pizza man or the local hot dog cart or taco truck from doing business…
“New York makes ‘Furnishing money or entertainment to induce attendance at polls’ a class A misdemeanor, and explicitly includes handing out ‘meat, drink, tobacco, refreshment or provision’ unless it is worth less than a dollar and the person providing it is not identified…
“Laws of these sorts have been the product of experience. In 1998, the Supreme Court of Kentucky, in Ellis v. Meeks, threw out the results of a primary election where the winner, Meeks (who prevailed by eight votes) had handed out free food at the polling place, and made it available to voters…
“[It should be noted that] S.B. 202 actually takes steps to fix [the] long lines. Georgia law previously allowed the state to override local election officials and require them to add more precincts or voting machines if people were left standing on line for an hour after the polls closed. S.B. 202 expands that authority, so that the state can step in and require more polling places or voting machines if voters in overcrowded precincts face lines of an hour or more at any of three measured intervals during the day.”
Dan McLaughlin, National Review
The left opposes the new law, arguing that it is unnecessary and aimed at reducing turnout among Democratic voters.
The left opposes the new law, arguing that it is unnecessary and aimed at reducing turnout among Democratic voters.
“Trump stoked unfounded fears about mail-in voting, without any evidence, for months before the election as he floundered in the polls. He continued to claim that the election was somehow rigged or stolen after his loss but failed to provide any evidence, losing every legal battle in the process… Dozens of election challenges failed to ‘uncover’ any evidence of widespread fraud at all, as did multiple Republican-led audits and recounts of close vote counts in states like Arizona and Georgia — where even law enforcement investigated allegations of fraud and found no evidence.”
Igor Derysh, Salon
“[Kemp] claimed that the state's new voting bill is intended to make elections more ‘secure, accessible and fair.’ That argument rings hollow since even Trump's own Justice Department found no evidence of widespread electoral fraud, while one of Trump's own lawyers argued in court this week that no reasonable people would believe her election fraud claims…
“Voting rights activists, by contrast, argue that the provisions of the bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature will disproportionately hurt the ability of minority voters to cast their ballots… [Photo ID] rules will disproportionately affect poorer voters and voters of color… Most ballot drop boxes must now be housed inside early voting locations, which are generally only required to be open during normal business hours -- limiting the usefulness of drop boxes for anyone who needs to drop their ballot off outside the normal work day.”
Maeve Reston, CNN
“Let’s say you sat down with a group to brainstorm on how best to strengthen our democracy. Let’s say someone said, ‘I know! Let’s make sure that people waiting to vote in long lines on hot days can’t be given water to drink!’ You might reply: Uh . . . what?’ Yet that is indeed one of the ‘reforms’ Republicans in Georgia implemented this week… It is clear who would be hurt most by this shift… [During Georgia’s primary elections last June] the average wait after 7 p.m. in predominantly non-White neighborhoods was 51 minutes, while in predominantly White neighborhoods it was six minutes.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“Alice O’Lenick, chairwoman of the Gwinnett County election board, didn’t mince words about the need to tighten up voting rules in Georgia. After the ‘terrible elections cycle’ in 2020, when Republicans lost both Georgia Senate seats and Biden won the state’s electoral votes, ‘I’m like a dog with a bone,’ she told fellow Republicans in January. ‘I will not let them end this session without changing some of these laws. They don’t have to change all of them, but they’ve got to change the major parts so that we at least have a shot at winning.’…
“When Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked why the RNC was involved in the [Arizona voting rights] case — in particular, why it had an interest in preventing people from having their votes counted if they were cast in the wrong precinct — [Michael Carvin, representing the RNC] didn’t bother to pretend this was about anything other than partisan politics. ‘Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,’ he said. ‘Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of [the Voting Rights Act] hurts us.’…
“A shot at winning. Politics as zero-sum game. Proof positive that this isn’t about the phantom menace of voter fraud. It’s about making it as hard as possible for voters who aren’t inclined in Republicans’ favor to have their ballots cast or counted.”
Ruth Marcus, Washington Post
Finally, “Under current law, key issues in election management — including decisions on disqualifying ballots and voter eligibility — are made by county boards of election. The new law allows the State Board of Elections to determine that these county boards are performing poorly, replacing the entire board with an administrator chosen at the state level. At the same time, the bill enhances the [state legislature’s] control over the state board… A full majority of the board will now be appointed by the Republican-dominated body… Given that Georgia Republicans have helped promote false allegations of voter fraud, it’s easy to see why handing them so much power over local election authorities is so worrying.”
Zack Beauchamp, Vox
