Georgia Republicans, who currently hold a majority in that state’s legislature and the governorship (despite Democrats winning statewide on the presidential level and having both U.S. Senate seats), passed a disgraceful bill Thursday which would substantially restrict voting rights and make it far more difficult for people to vote, especially to those living in cities and for communities of color (both groups which vote overwhelmingly Democratic).
The bill, strongly pushed for by Republicans nationwide, included many measures to restrict voting and make it more difficult in the state. The bill included provisions that would require a driver’s license or Georgia state ID card (instead of just a signature) for obtaining an absentee ballot, increases the time required to request an absentee ballot from the Friday before Election Day to 11 days before an election, reduces the number (and restricts the hours that they can be used) of drop boxes for depositing absentee ballots, strips the secretary of state of the election board, reduce the time between Election Day and a runoff election from nine weeks to just four, gives the legislature more power over elections, and even criminalizes giving food and water to voters waiting in line to vote.
This is one of the most recessive bills, and one of the most significant targeting voting, since the Jim Crow era, when Black people were disenfranchised all across the South. It is also the first, and the most significant, vote-suppression bill that has been passed in a major battleground state.
Considering the fact that the Republican election board in the state has been reducing the number of in-person voting stations and making lines longer and longer in liberal cities like Atlanta, banning giving water to a voter waiting in a six- or seven-hour long line is simply outrageous and does absolutely nothing except to discourage people from voting.
Republicans around the country have sought to pass bills to make it harder to vote all across the country in the name of “election integrity.” Once again, there have been hardly any cases of voter fraud reported across the country—it was one of the most secure elections ever—and even officials in Georgia had admitted that voting was conducted securely in 2020 in the state. This is because former President Donald Trump has been spreading conspiracy theories about the election since he lost last November.
The call from the GOP comes after Democrats were able to flip Georgia on the presidential level and capture both U.S. Senate seats there for the first time in decades. In fact, the two Georgia U.S. Senate races, which were decided in a runoff in January, were the races that ultimately handed control of the Senate to the Democrats.
By making it harder to vote, the GOP benefits. Many low-income workers and people of color, who are disproportionately poorer, rely on extended voting hours, early voting, and absentee ballots in order to be able to cast their ballots. On the contrary, rich, retired, rural white voters, who disproportionately vote Republican, are least likely to be affected by this bill, since there aren’t many people in the rural areas compared to dense urban cores and they also are far more likely to have the time to go out and vote.
Democrats’ base, which is typically younger and more diverse, fall right into the subset of people that this law is targeting. Blacks voted for Democrats in overwhelming numbers: 90 percent of them voted for both Democrats in the U.S. Senate runoff. There is no way to sugarcoat this bill: it is a thinly veiled power grab from the Republican Party to try and stop Democrats from winning here.
The chairwoman of the Georgia Democratic Party, Rep. Nikema Williams, called the bill “flagrantly racist” and a “slap in the face to Georgia’s civil rights legacy.” She said that the state GOP is “trying to outright silence Georgia voters by making it harder to cast a ballot and letting partisan actors take over local elections.”
Democrats have promised immediate action and lawsuits against the bill. By Thursday evening, a lawsuit from the Democracy Docket, a voting rights group, had, in conjunction with the New Georgia Project, the Black Voters Matter Fund, and Rise Inc., had been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against the bill. Among other things, the lawsuit claims the Georgia law is in violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection and in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Many Democrats, both within the state and nationally, had been massively critical of the bill. Stacey Abrams, a voting rights activist in Georgia, called the bill one intended to suppress voting. “Instead of winning new voters, you rig the system against their participation, and you steal the right to vote.”
Abrams also said that many rural white voters, which, once again, lean Republican, rely on absentee ballots, and by making absentee ballots more difficult to obtain, the GOP would also harm themselves.
President Joe Biden said Republican efforts to limit voting were “sick” and un-American,” and vowed to stop states from continuing to pursue voting restrictions, which he referred to as “despicable.” The House passed a sweeping reform bill a few weeks ago entitled H.R. 1, which would be one of the most significant expansions to voting rights since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Unfortunately, it is expected to face a Republican filibuster in the Senate. Biden said he “strongly supports” moving in the direction of eliminating the filibuster, a procedural tool that effectively requires 60 votes to approve most legislation. Biden had long been a skeptic of removing the filibuster.
Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican governor, defended the bill, saying that it made it “harder to cheat” and “easier to vote.” A state representative said it would provide “more accountability” to voting in the state.
Iowa is another state that passed a bill restricting voting earlier this month. The bill shortened the state’s early voting period and closed the polls an hour early on Election Day.
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