[ad_1]
ATLANTA (AP) – After resisting criticism for certifying President Donald Trump’s electoral defeat to Democrat Joe Biden, Republican officials in Georgia are proposing additional requirements for the state’s postal voting process, despite the lack of evidence of fraud or systemic irregularities.
Republicans are focusing on a plan to require photo ID for mail-in ballots. Voting rights activists and Democrats argue the change is unnecessary and would deprive voters of their voting rights.
Biden beat President Donald Trump by just over 12,500 votes in Georgia, with Biden receiving nearly twice the record number of postal votes as the Republican president, according to the secretary of state’s office. A recount requested by Trump was ending and is not expected to change the overall result.
Trump, who for months has cast unfounded doubts about the integrity of mail-in votes, has also made unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud during the presidential race in Georgia.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff vehemently dismissed the allegations, stating unequivocally that there was no evidence of systemic errors or fraud in last month’s election. Yet Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp, both Republicans who have been publicly criticized by Trump, have joined in the pressure to demand photo ID for the absent vote.
“Voters who vote in person must show photo ID, and we should consider applying that same standard to postal voting,” Kemp said in remarks broadcast live online.
Raffensperger also suggested allowing state officials to intervene in counties that have systemic issues with election administration and expanding the ways in which challenges can be posed to votes cast by residents who do not live. not where they say it.
The photo ID idea has the backing of several members of the state legislature, including Senate Republican Majority Leader Mike Dugan. “I don’t think there should be different standards for the same process,” Dugan said in an interview.
Republican House Speaker David Ralston was skeptical of the postal vote, telling local media in April that the increase in postal voting “would be extremely devastating for Republicans and conservatives in Georgia.” Political analysts have said that generally more Democrats than Republicans use mail-in ballots.
Ralston later said he was not talking about the loss of his party’s advantage, but the potential for fraud. “We must do everything in our power to ensure that votes are not stolen, cast fraudulently or plagued by administrative errors,” he said in a statement this week.
Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said in an interview with The Associated Press that anyone who currently knows the name, address and date of birth of a person can request a postal vote on that person’s name. She said that while signature matches provide some security for mail ballots, the process should be strengthened.
One way to do this could be to require a person’s driver’s license number or a photocopy of a separate piece of identification, she said.
“We have to guarantee all the possibilities of postal voting so that we never again see a candidate running in this state saying that the election was stolen because of the postal votes,” she said.
As Republicans appear poised to push forward the requirement for photo ID in the next legislative session, Democrats and civil rights organizations are sounding the alarm bells.
With no evidence of widespread fraud or other problems in the election, it doesn’t make sense to talk about measures that could ultimately prove to be barriers to voting, said Andrea Young, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.
“What is the problem you are trying to solve?” she asked. “The rule should be the first: ‘Do no harm’ in democracy, and every time more restrictions are placed on a process, you run the risk of depriving Georgian citizens of their rights.”
Young says adding photo ID for postal voting would be detrimental because “we know these barriers impact differently on African American voters, on young voters, and in this case, on the elderly who have certainly won the right to vote ”.
State Senator Jen Jordan, Democrat of Atlanta, echoed Young’s concerns, saying Republicans are offering solutions looking for a problem.
“What that tells me is that they just don’t want people to vote,” Jordan said. “And in particular, they don’t want Democrats to vote, or the people who don’t support the chosen candidate’s vote, and they’re going to try to make it as difficult as possible.”
Democrats and voting rights groups have for years sought to curb postal rejections in Georgia, arguing that minorities have been disproportionately affected. Absentee ballots are sometimes rejected because the signatures on the outer envelope are deemed not to match the signatures in the voter registration system, or because the envelope is not signed at all.
An agreement signed in March to settle a lawsuit brought by the Democratic Party sets out a standard process that must be used statewide to judge signatures. This deal has been the subject of much of Trump’s online anger, and he has wrongly said that it “makes it impossible to verify and match signatures on ballots and envelopes.”
[ad_2]
Source link