Georgia house passes sweeping voter restriction law

[ImStillMags Mags]

The Republican-led Georgia House of Representatives on Thursday passed its version of a sweeping election overhaul bill, moving it one step closer to enacting election law changes and restricting voter access in the state.

The legislation -- SB 202 -- would limit drop boxes to the inside of early voting locations during voting hours, make giving food or drinks to a voter a misdemeanor, allow for unlimited challenges to voter registrations and eligibility, and grant state officials broad rights, including the ability to replace local election officials. It would also shorten the runoff cycle from the current nine weeks to just four weeks and remove the elected secretary of state as chair of the state election board.

The package's passage comes only days before the end of the legislative session and as the GOP-led state Legislature hopes to successfully make election changes, part of a national Republican effort that aims to restrict access to the ballot box following record turnout in the November election.

The bill was amended in the House and will need to pass each chamber again after conference. Final passage is expected next week, right before the legislative session is set to end.

During Thursday's floor debate, Republican state Rep. Barry Fleming argued the bill would provide "more accountability" to the election process in the state.

Democrats sharply criticized the GOP proposal. "We cannot undermine free and fair elections in Georgia because of baseless and unproven claims of fraud," said Democratic state Rep. Kimberly Alexander.

Voting rights groups have slammed the far-reaching bill, particularly for its provisions aimed at the secretary of state and local election officials. They argue that granting the state new powers over county elections bucks the tradition of local control and could lead to a scenario in which state officials swoop in to prevent a county from certifying its election results.

"It will make what we all lived through in 2020, child's play," said Lauren Groh-Wargo -- CEO of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams -- in a news conference on Tuesday, as the bill was approved to head to the full House for a vote.

The bill is part of a larger effort by GOP-led legislatures across the country to pass restrictive voting measures in key states like Arizona, Michigan and Florida. As of February, state legislators in 43 states have introduced more than 250 bills with restrictive voting provisions, according to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

House Speaker David Ralston supported the legislation on Monday, following the passage of the bill out of a key committee, saying that it made "voting more accessible and improves election security."

The legislation that passed out of committee removed a provision that would have restricted weekend voting -- it only allowed early voting on two weekend days. Voting rights activists had criticized as attacking "Souls to the Polls" -- programs that help drive turnout among Black churchgoers on Sunday, a key Democratic constituency.

The current version now requires weekend voting on both Saturdays and makes it optional on both Sundays during the three weeks of early voting in Georgia.

The bill comes as Georgia's changing demographics have made the longtime Republican stronghold a key political battleground.

Last November, President Joe Biden became the first Democrat in nearly three decades to win the state. And strong voter turnout in January helped send two Democrats to the US Senate, flipping control of the chamber to their party. One of those new senators, Raphael Warnock, captured his seat in a special election and will be on the ballot again in 2022.

The preamble to the bill said changes are needed to address the "lack of elector confidence in the election system."

The bill makes broad changes to how elections are administered and how and when voters can receive and cast their ballots. Under the proposal, for instance, voters would have to request absentee ballots 11 days before an election, rather than the Friday before Election Day as currently allowed. Additionally, voters who seek absentee ballots would have to provide a copy of their identification or the number of their Georgia driver's license or state ID to both apply for and return the ballot. It also would prohibit the secretary of state's office from sending unsolicited absentee ballot applications, as it did before the 2020 primaries due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A similar bill, HB 531, is currently advancing in the Georgia Senate and is expected to be up for a floor vote in the coming days. The bill, roughly half the length of SB 202, is far less comprehensive and has some marked differences, including a provision that would allow counties to purchase their own voting machines as long as they meet the minimum requirements set by the state election board and certified by the secretary of state.

[Celt]

Good ol' Jim Crow. There's no school like old school.

[Navy]

Yeah...bummer the cheating gets a bit harder , huh?

[rivcuban]

The only ones cheating are the Republicans (as usual).

[Navy]

That dog don't hunt...it's liberals who fight voter ID, It's liberals who cheat..

[rivcuban]

And Navy,

 how can someone cheat if they don't require voter ID?  Every voter is on a list that is at the polls.  If you don't have ID, how can a person know what name to use to cheat?  When you go to the polls you identify yourself and then you are crossed off the list.  Virtually impossible to cheat without requiring ID.  I know you'll make some bullshit explanations.

[Navy]

If that's so...then why is Lobo and others here always saying by requiring ID to vote , we're suppressing the vote??????

[Susiejoe]

One does absentee voting dofus.  DNC gets a list of registered voters and it is open season on what name to use.  If you let voting go on for too long, they work with updated lists. Lot of people showed up only to be told they had already voted.   Besides that since you conveniently forget, the mantra you guys screamed was that every vote should count - regardless.  So they did and so they will not in the future.  The objective is to ensure that only LEGAL votes count.  

Long been law that you cannot provide gifts to voters.  Be it water, be it a steak dinner, be it a lottery ticket.  Tough shit.  .  

And rather than place 90% of the drop boxes in democrapic areas, they will be evenly spaced throughout the state.  Heaven forbid. That is the opposite of Jim Crow but like the after the CRA in the '60s, you will just  have to deal with it.  

[PirateLT]

It's making legit voting harder.  The only way the GOP can remain in power it appears.

[rivcuban]

I have no problem requiring ID to vote.  Maybe Lobo's concern is that some poor people don't have ID or a driver's license.  They need to go the DMV and get one.

[Susiejoe]

Problem is that libbies live to cheat.  They insult blacks by claiming they are too stupid to get an ID.  

[Lobo]

<< The preamble to the bill said changes are needed to address the "lack of elector confidence in the election system.">>

A "lack of elector confidence" created entirely by them, using their "massive voter fraud" lie that has been thoroughly disproved every time it has been looked at, including by commissions appointed by presidents George W Bush and Donald Trump! "Elector confidence" which this Jim Crow-style bill destroys in its entirety. Except among rightwing white Republicans, of course, who can now have full confidence in elections "unsullied" by all those "wrong elements" taking part in them -- blacks, Hispanics, students, young people, urban and suburban liberals, etc, whose votes are "fraudulent" by definition in their minds.

<<The legislation -- SB 202 -- would limit drop boxes to the inside of early voting locations during voting hours, make giving food or drinks to a voter a misdemeanor, allow for unlimited challenges to voter registrations and eligibility, and grant state officials broad rights, including the ability to replace local election officials. It would also shorten the runoff cycle from the current nine weeks to just four weeks and remove the elected secretary of state as chair of the state election board.

Voting rights groups have slammed the far-reaching bill, particularly for its provisions aimed at the secretary of state and local election officials. They argue that granting the state new powers over county elections bucks the tradition of local control and could lead to a scenario in which state officials swoop in to prevent a county from certifying its election results.

"It will make what we all lived through in 2020, child's play,">>

Yep. Next to the part making it a crime to give water to someone who has been standing in line for 10 hours to vote, my favorite part has to be the one allowing GOP state officials to simply replace election officials in counties that didn't go their way, in order to toss results they don't like. And, of course, the part allowing unlimited purging of minority registrations. They also looked at minority voting patterns -- like the Sunday after church "Souls To Polls" tradition at mostly black churches -- and did away with them with "surgical precision", as a federal judge described a similar GOP voter-suppression law in North Carolina, when overturning it as blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.

This is a shameful law; a direct repudiation of both the letter and spirit of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As a Georgian, I cringe at it. But every decent American, in every state and region, should hang their head in shame at this restoration of Jim Crow, because similar laws to disenfranchise the majority of their voters are being pushed by the radical extreme-right TrumpliQAn Party in every state they control.

[Fritz the Cat420]

Republicans are sick and unAmerican. 

[Lobo]

<< I have no problem requiring ID to vote.  Maybe Lobo's concern is that some poor people don't have ID or a driver's license.  They need to go the DMV and get one.  >>

Why should an American who lives in an urban environment and doesn't drive have to pay money (anywhere from $40 to $90), spend hours at a county DMV, pass a driving test, and lose either that day's pay or his job altogether, to get a drivers license he doesn't need, in order to exercise the most fundamental right and obligation citizens have in a democracy?

Worse, even those "free voter IDs" some states hand out require ID like birth certificates to obtain, which are not only costly, but difficult to impossible for many. Especially if they don't have a computer and internet, and a debit or credit card to pay for it with.

Voting is not like passing a bad check, or using a false credit card to buy a TV with, where a thief might well decide that the benefit outweighs the risk. Posing as someone you aren't, just to be one voter among millions, in an election that might or might be beneficial to you in some unspecific way sometime in the future, and in which the penalty is years in prison and deportation, is essentially all risk versus no benefit. Which is why it almost never occurs (0.00003% of all votes cast, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU).

[Lobo]

<< Long been law that you cannot provide gifts to voters.  Be it water, be it a steak dinner, be it a lottery ticket.  Tough shit.  .    >>

A steak dinner or a lottery ticket is a "gift". A sip of water for someone who has been standing in line for hours to vote is "common decency" (admittedly, a concept TrumpliQAns are unfamiliar with).

The reason those lines were so long -- up to 10 hours long in the last election, only in urban and suburban districts -- is because GOP state election officials restricted the number of voting machines and ballots available to those overwhelmingly Democratic districts.

[Susiejoe]

Are you saying there were long lines in the 2020 election and you were up there giving those poor people water because it is so hot and dry in Georgia in November Lobo?  

[Susiejoe]

Stealing an election has consequences kitty.  

[PirateLT]

election wasn't stolen snowflake.