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Georgia Republicans have unveiled sweeping new legislation that would make it considerably more difficult to vote in the state, following an election with record turnout and growing participation of black voters.
This measure is one of the bravest efforts to make voting more difficult in America in recent years. The bill would prevent officials from offering early voting on Sunday, a day traditionally used by black churches to mobilize voters as part of a “souls at the polls” effort. This would place new limits on the use of mail-in ballot boxes, restrict who can handle a mail ballot, and require voters to provide their driver’s license number or a copy of another voucher. identity with their request for a ballot by mail. It would also require voters to provide the same driver’s license information on the ballot itself or on the last four digits of their social security number if they do not have acceptable identification.
The bill gives voters less time to request and return ballots by mail, not only by extending the deadline for returning a request, but also by limiting requests to start 78 days before an election instead of Current 180. It forces election officials to reject ballots mistakenly thrown into the wrong neighborhood and prohibits organizers from offering food or water to voters queuing to vote.
“With rigorous precision, the bill targets voters of color,” said Nse Ufot, head of the New Georgia Project, one of the groups that mobilized voters of color in Georgia. “The Republicans of Georgia have seen what happens when black voters are empowered and show up to the polls, and now they are launching a concerted effort to suppress the votes and votes of black Georgians.”
Helen Butler, executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, one of the groups that helped mobilize black voters last year, said the bill was not justified. One of the ways Butler’s group helped voters ahead of the election was by helping them return their mail-in ballot requests to election officials. The Republican proposal would prohibit it.
“There is no reason for that other than this ideology and this disinformation that there has been fraud. There was no electoral fraud. The governor, everyone said there was no fraud, ”she said in an interview.
In a hearing Thursday, Barry Fleming, the bill’s sponsor, said the early voting changes were an attempt to create uniformity across the state. He said the effort to shorten the postal voting period was an attempt to overlap with in-person voting.
Effort to shorten postal voting comes after many voters saw severe delays in getting their ballots in the mail due to delays with the United States Postal Service and overwhelmed polling stations . About a third of the first votes in the state came from black voters, and Joe Biden overwhelmingly won the postal vote in Georgia.
“His new problem with early voting is simple: Too many black Georgians have used it and Republicans have been humiliated,” said Seth Bringman, spokesperson for Fair Fight Action, the civic action group led by Stacey Abrams. , the former Democratic candidate for governor.
“Instead of listening to the wishes of conspiracy theorists and insurgents, he should listen to the thousands of early voters in his constituency from both parties.
Republicans promised the changes in Georgia after Joe Biden narrowly carried the state in November and Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, won staggering upheavals over Republican incumbents in November.
State officials, including Republicans, have repeatedly said there is no evidence of election fraud, but Republicans have vowed to impose further restrictions anyway.
A separate bill under consideration in the state Senate would eliminate the absentee vote without excuse, which Republicans enshrined in law in 2005, allowing people to vote by mail only if they are 75 or more or if they have an excuse.
Republicans made the bill public just over an hour before a hearing, leaving little time for the public and lawmakers to consider what was in it. More than two dozen groups wrote to Fleming on Thursday, urging him to suspend consideration of the measure.
“It contains a set of proposals that would have devastating consequences for voting rights in Georgia,” they wrote. “It is absolutely unacceptable that lawmakers, voting rights advocates and the Georgian people have been blinded by this publication.”
The effort in Georgia is part of a nationwide push, led by Republicans, to enact a wave of new voting restrictions after the 2020 election. According to an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 165 projects laws are pending in 33 states, which would make voting more difficult.
“The lost right! So now they’re trying to change the rules and make it harder to vote, ”Deborah Scott, executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, another group that has worked to mobilize black voters, said in an email. “It’s a shame that in 2021, blacks and browns in Georgia must continue to fight for our citizenship rights.”
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