Sign up for the Fight to Vote newsletter
Republicans in Georgia have unveiled sweeping new legislation that would make it dramatically more difficult to vote in the state after record-breaking elections and rising black voter participation.
The measure is one of the most brutal attempts to make voting more difficult in America in recent years. The bill would deter officials from voting early on Sunday, a day traditionally used by black churches to mobilize voters as part of a “soul to the polls” effort. It would set new limits on the use of ballot mailboxes, limit who can handle a ballot when absent, and require voters to provide their driver’s license number or a copy of another form of identification when applying for a ballot by mail. It would also require voters to provide the same driver’s license information on the post-in ballot paper itself or the last four digits of their Social Security number if they don’t have an acceptable form of identification.
The bill gives voters less time to request and return post-in ballots, not only to extend the application deadline, but also request to begin 78 days before an election instead of the current 180. It requires election officials to reject ballots thrown in error in the wrong district and prohibits organizers from offering food or water to voters lining up to cast a vote.
“With exacting precision, the bill is aimed at voters of color,” said Nse Ufot, head of the New Georgia Project, one of the groups that mobilized voters of color in Georgia. “Georgian Republicans saw what happens when black voters are authorized and show up at the polls, and now they are launching a concerted effort to suppress the votes and votes of black Georgians.”
Helen Butler, the executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, one of the groups that helped mobilize black voters last year, said there was no justification for the bill. One of the ways Butler’s group aided voters ahead of the election was by helping them return their absentee cover slips to election officials. The Republican proposal would forbid that.
“There is no reason other than this ideology and this misinformation that there was fraud. There was no fraud in the election. The governor, everyone said there was no fraud, ”she said in an interview.
At a hearing on Thursday, Barry Fleming, the bill’s sponsor, said the early vote changes were an attempt to create uniformity in the state. He said the attempt to shorten the mail-in voting period was an attempt to overlap with personal voting.
The attempt to curtail postal voting comes after many voters have seen serious delays in receiving their ballots due to delays at the United States Postal Service and overwhelmed election agencies. About a third of the early votes in the state came from black voters, and Joe Biden won the mail-in-vote in Georgia by an overwhelming majority.
“His newfound problem with early voting is simple: Too many black Georgians used it and Republicans were humiliated,” said Seth Bringman, a spokesman for Fair Fight Action, the civil society action group led by Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic governmental candidate.
“Instead of listening to the desires of conspiracy theorists and insurgents, he should listen to the thousands of early voters from both parties in his district.”
Republicans pledged the changes to Georgia after Joe Biden narrowly carried the state in November and Jon Ossoff and Rev Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, won stunning setbacks over Republican incumbents in November.
State officials, including Republicans, have repeatedly said there was no evidence of fraud in the elections, but Republicans have vowed to impose new restrictions anyway.
A separate bill pending in the Senate would eliminate absenteeism voting, something Republicans enacted into law in 2005, allowing people to vote by mail only if they are 75 or older or have an excuse.
Republicans made the bill public just over an hour before a hearing, leaving the public and lawmakers little time to judge what it said. More than 20 groups wrote to Fleming on Thursday, urging him to interrupt discussion of the measure.
“It contains a series of proposals that would have devastating consequences for the right to vote in Georgia,” they wrote. “It is absolutely unacceptable that legislators, voting advocates and the people of Georgia have been blinded by this release.”
The effort in Georgia comes amid nationwide pressure led by Republicans to introduce a wave of new voting restrictions after the 2020 election. According to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, there are at least 165 bills in 33 states. pending that would make it more difficult to vote.
“Lost the right! So now they are trying to change the rules and make it harder to vote, ”Deborah Scott, the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, another group that worked to mobilize black voters, said in an email. “It is unfortunate that in 2021 black and brown people in Georgia will have to keep fighting for our citizenship rights.”