I know the left does not want to hear this, but there is no right to vote. It is not a right enumerated in the Constitution. Despite that, voting is a powerful thing. It is more powerful than a firearm. The illegal use of a firearm can lead to loss of lives, but the illegal use of votes can undo the will of the entire country.
That is why democrats have lost their minds. Only after 47 years in office is Joe Biden screaming about voting laws being “Jim Crow.”
He claimed the election changes “make Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle,” which makes no sense except to suggest he’s got birds on his brain. Biden did it again Friday, after Georgia’s election changes were signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp, saying the changes represent “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”
By then it was clear Jim Crow was the party’s official talking point. Stacey Abrams and Atlanta protesters both labeled the Georgia law “Jim Crow 2.0.” One activist called it “Jim Crow with makeup and cologne.” Another called it “Jim Crow in a suit and tie.”
The list goes on, but you get the point. The left is eager to racialize any dispute and, for shock effect, dredges up dark pages from out history that bear zero resemblance to the current situation.
But one need not probe too deeply to find proof that Biden is mentally challenged:
But as others have pointed out, voting laws in Delaware are stricter than the new law in Georgia, yet Biden never said peep about his home state.
democrats fully believe that minorities are too stupid to be able to procure an ID. Somehow minorities are not too stupid to get ID’s to fly, drive or gain entry to a Democrat National Convention.
There are seven things for which the Federal Jim Crow Government requires an ID
1.Welfare Benefits
2. Registration for Buying Guns
3. Petition Your Government
4. Right of Assembly
5. Right to Marry
6. Freedom of Movement (flying_
7. Public Accommodations (hotels)
There are many more times an ID is required, such as buying alcohol, cigarettes, opening a bank account, applying for food stamps or welfare, applying for welfare or social security, adopting a pet and buying certain cold medications (pseudoephedrine in particular) among them.
All civilized nations in the world require ID for voting. The Supreme Court has ruled that a photo ID does not place an undue burden on voters and does not violate their Constitutional rights.
Mexico requires a government-issued photo ID to vote.
On the other hand, it is difficult for a reasonable person to understand how allowing murderers, rapists and sex offenders to vote from prison makes the country a better place.
The new Georgia Law does not make voting harder. It just makes cheating harder.
Frankly, voting in this country is far too easy. As the vote is truly more powerful than a weapon, it needs to be similarly vetted. A universal background check should be required for voting, along with a Federally issued photo ID. We should raise our standards to at least meet those of Mexico. Voting is a privilege and a degree of responsibility accompanies that privilege. A photo ID is not an undue burden, especially given the myriad of things that require one. If democrats are really concerned about those who don’t have one, they should help everyone get one.
And if you entered this country illegally, you should never be permitted to vote in a Federal election.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Articles like this one are why the Left is trying its darndest to call “rationality,” “logic,” “mathematical proof,” and empirical conclusions,” as “racist,” even examples of “white supremacist thinking.”
The other day a music school for gifted students admitted it was considering getting rid of all “scored music,” including ALL the music of classical writers like Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin, Stravinski, etc.
Odd that they are being considered as “colonial” in their music even tho other, more commie nations like China and the old USSR revered them!
The Bolshoi Ballet flourished under the USSR.
But woke does not exactly equal commie.
It is commie on stupid.
It is commie that eats its own.
Does requiring voter id make voting harder?
Only if you are cheating.
Does music without written notation make rap any better?
No, never in a million years.
The Democrat’s HR1 is an affront to elections. This proposal intends to legitimize and legalize every form of fraud the Democrats used in 2020. It is no surprise that dumping ballots out into the public and accepting them back without any identification of who marked them, not identifying who shows up to vote, not restricting the time period for voting or restricting who, when and where people can electioneer is an invitation to massive fraud. All that while removing EVERY means to secure the vote merely makes election irrelevant.
That, of course, is the point. The fact that Democrats have to LIE to make their point proves it.
The Democ-Rats only want loyal Bootlickers and illegal aliens to be allowed to vote why else do they support HR-1
“If you can’t prove you’re an American citizen with legal voting rights, you ain’t voting.”
– The Majority
Trump had a historic 15% of the African American Vote and about a third of the Hispanic Vote.
The days of Democrats using minorities as voting cattle are dwindling, thus the ramp up in using the new Scarlet Letter, “racism” to grasp onto the remaining slave they have who are rapidly leaving the plantation in favor of freedom of thought, and choice.
“If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black”.
Context and actual video evidence of Biden saying this, both beyond dispute.
Only in America can the media propaganda machine be so powerful as to get people who claim to be against racism to vote for a certified racist.
@Nathan Blue:
Enter HR1.
Dr John, the fact that you spent so much on a voter ID to defend the right wing assault on people voting is telling.
Voter ID is not the issue in GA or other GOP states. We all understand that you need an ID to get on a plane as the defenders of disenfranchising minorities, elderly, students, etc use this distraction repeatedly.
It’s as if the GOP could literally enact a law requiring all democrats to walk from their homes to the polls carrying a 50 lb anvil in order to be able to vote and you would still be justifying it under some premise of voter ID.
This has nothing to do with Voter ID. The people making these laws are openly admitting they cannot win an election without limiting the people voting.
@Ronald J. Ward:
It has everything to do with voter ID.
Yeah, that’s what HR1 is for. Democrats know that only through fraud can they win elections (2020) and they want to make fraud federal law and ban any positive ID.
By Jamelle Bouie:
The most outrageous provision of the Election Integrity Act of 2021, the omnibus election bill signed by Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia last week, is one that makes it illegal for anyone except poll workers to offer food or water directly to voters standing in line. Defenders of the law say that this is meant to stop electioneering at the polls; critics say it is a direct response to volunteers who assisted those Georgians, many of them Black, who waited for hours to cast their ballots in the 2020 presidential election.
Less outrageous but more insidious is a provision that removes the secretary of state from his (or her) position as chairman of the State Election Board and replaces him with a new nonpartisan member selected by a majority of the Georgia’s Republican-controlled Legislature. The law also gives the board, and by extension the Legislature, the power to suspend underperforming county election officials and replace them with a single individual.
Looming in the background of this “reform” is the current secretary of state Brad Raffensperger’s conflict with Donald Trump, who pressured him to subvert the election and deliver Trump a victory. What won Raffesnsperger praise and admiration from Democrats and mainstream observers has apparently doomed his prospects within the Republican Party, where “stop the steal” is dogma and Trump is still the rightful president to many. It is not even clear that Raffensperger will hold office after his term ends in 2023; he must fight off a primary challenge next year from Representative Jody Hice of Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, an outspoken defender of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.
This is what it looks like when a political party turns against democracy. It doesn’t just try to restrict the vote; it creates mechanisms to subvert the vote and attempts to purge officials who might stand in the way. Georgia is in the spotlight, for reasons past and present, but it is happening across the country wherever Republicans are in control.
Last Wednesday, for example, Republicans in Michigan introduced bills to limit use of ballot drop boxes, require photo ID for absentee ballots, and allow partisan observers to monitor and record all precinct audits. “Senate Republicans are committed to making it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” the State Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, said in a statement. Shirkey, you may recall, was one of two Michigan Republican leaders who met with Trump at his behest after the election. He also described the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 as a “hoax.”
Republican lawmakers in Arizona, another swing state, have also introduced bills to limit absentee voting in accordance with the former president’s belief that greater access harmed his campaign. One proposal would require ID for mail-in ballots, and shorten the window for mail-in voters to receive and return their ballots. Another bill would purge from the state’s list of those who are automatically sent a mail-in ballot any voter who failed to cast such a ballot in “both the primary election and the general election for two consecutive primary and general elections.”
One Arizona Republican, John Kavanagh, a state representative, gave a sense of the party’s intent when he told CNN, “Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues.” He continued: “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”
In other words, Republicans are using the former president’s failed attempt to overturn the election as a guide to how you would change the system to make it possible. In Georgia, as we’ve seen, that means stripping power from an unreliable partisan and giving it, in effect, to the party itself. In Pennsylvania, where a state Supreme Court with a Democratic majority unanimously rejected a Republican lawsuit claiming that universal mail-in balloting was unconstitutional, it means working to end statewide election of justices, essentially gerrymandering the court. In Nebraska, which Republicans won, it means changing the way the state distributes its electoral votes, from a district-based system in which Democrats have a chance to win one potentially critical vote, as Joe Biden and Barack Obama did, to winner-take-all.
This fact pattern underscores a larger truth: that the Republican Party is driving the nation’s democratic decline. A recent paper by Jacob M. Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington, makes this plain. Using a new measure of state-level democratic performance in the United States from 2000 to 2018, Grumbach finds that Republican control of state government “consistently and profoundly reduces state democratic performance during this time period.” The nationalization of American politics and the coordination of parties across states means that “state governments controlled by the same party behave similarly when they take power.” Republican-controlled governments in states as different as Alabama and Wisconsin have “taken similar actions with respect to democratic institutions.”
The Republican Party’s turn against democratic participation and political equality is evident in more than just these bills and proposals. You can see it in how Florida Republicans promptly instituted difficult-to-pay fines and fees akin to a poll tax after a supermajority of the state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment to end the disenfranchisement of most felons. You can see it in how Missouri Republicans simply ignored the results of a ballot initiative on Medicaid expansion.
Where does this all lead? Perhaps it just ends with a few new restrictions and new limits, enough, in conjunction with redistricting, to tilt the field in favor of the Republican Party in the next election cycle but not enough to substantially undermine American democracy. Looking at the 2020 election, however — and in particular at the 147 Congressional Republicans who voted not to certify the Electoral College vote — it’s not hard to imagine how this escalates, especially if Trump and his allies are still in control of the party.
If Republicans are building the infrastructure to subvert an election — to make it possible to overturn results or keep Democrats from claiming electoral votes — then we have to expect that given a chance, they’ll use it.
@Ronald J. Ward:
There is no assault on voters…only Democrats making it too easy to vote, as to allow for and abet fraud.
Equal voting access, yes. Making it easy for duped poor, black, and young people to vote Democrat because they don’t know any better?
No.
@Ronald J. Ward:
As usual, Dems project and accuse Reps of doing what they just did.
A billion-dollar infrastructure was built to rig the 2020 election for the Democrats.
They used it. Now our Republic is broken and the majority of normal Americans childishly labeled as “racists” are going to flush the illegal, social-contract breaking Democrats either peacefully….or not so peacefully.
@Ronald J. Ward: All HR1 is for is to make Democrat fraud legal. That’s why it mandates getting rid of ALL voter security.
@Nathan Blue:
So, literacy tests? Who decides who is or isn’t duped? Or do we conclude people who vote for a Democrat simply doesn’t know better so accordingly should not be allowed to easily vote?
Are older white males exempt even if they are duped or are poor, black, and young people more easily duped?
Your very words admit your reluctance of allowing every legal American of legal age to vote.
And how does any of this pertain to an ID?
And Deplorable and Retire05, by all means, proceed with the off topic demand that I respond to your irrelevant questions so Nathan can avoid accountability of his admission of placing obstacles on Democratic voters.
@Nathan Blue:
Well, that is simply divorced from reality and cannot be verified on any serious level. But you are a demonstrated unhinged loon that has proven to have no connection with reality. You simply say many stupid things and repeat debunked lies as if you had an iota of credence.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Well, it’s pretty easy to determine that anyone that voted for the idiot Biden KNOWING he is a racist, a rapist, a criminal and incompetent is a moron. Likewise anyone who voted for Hillary knowing she was a liar, a criminal and supported a pedophile/rapist. Likewise anyone that supported Obama in his second election knowing he was a liar, a racist and a failure.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Every legal American of legal age is already, and always has been, allowed to vote.
You support harvesting votes of people who don’t know any better, and that’s not democracy. That’s tyranny.
Making it easier for black people to vote is, by the very definition of the term, racist….as hell.
You need one. To vote. So we know you’re you, and you don’t accidentally or intentionally vote twice, like many did in 2020 (by design).
Oh, that old “it’s debunked!” defense. Doesn’t really cover for the fact that you can’t argue the point, at all.
We all have agreed, as Americans, to follow certain rules and not play dirty. You people have broken that contract, and feign ignorance.
This ends with either pushing you people out, or forcing you to re-commit to our democratically elected Constitutional Republic by force.
Playing dumb and dirty tricks are….well….treason. Stop while you still can.
@Deplorable Me: “Using the rabble” is a tried and true method for despots everywhere to seize power.
Ron/AJ doesn’t understand that we’re protecting vulnerable people by not letting assholes like him use them as voting cattle, which is wrong.
A fractionally-employed Starbucks barista with college-debt should have some simple “hurdles” to letting them vote, such as simply getting to the booth on their own abilities. If they can’t, that protects us from those who simply vote due to being brainwashed by SNL, killer-Cuomo’s brother, etc.
@Nathan Blue:
It’s unknown if you realize how unhinged you are but you’re actually now advocating making it more difficult for the physically impaired, along with who you consider mentally impaired, to vote.
Aside from those physically challenged, your definition of mental deficiency seems to be anyone that doesn’t vote for the candidate or political party of your choice.
From your very admission this is about restricting the “duped poor, black, and young people to vote Democrat because they don’t know any better” and those brainwashed by SNL and other ridiculous nonsense.
Basically what you’re saying (and you’ve said before) is that if one doesn’t vote for your candidate or party (or more specifically, if they vote for a Democrat), that person has mental challenges that should void their vote which these laws do by restricting access to that person (all while also claiming the laws do not create obstacles).
So what you truly believe (which you say you believe but yet say you don’t) is simply inconsistent with a fair election process.
For one political party to impose “hurdles” for the other political party to vote because they feel the other party has been brainwashed by SNL or has been duped is no more than a power grabbing scam, another Big Lie to the American people.
And even the big liars and con men who are pulling off this disenfranchisement scam aren’t going as far to admit publicly (although many republicans admitted publicly that the more people vote the more they’d lose) what you have.
@Nathan Blue: Hell, I’m all for voting by mail or even electronically, as soon as someone can show me how the vote is secured against fraud. What the Democrats are trying to do is to make fraud much easier and voter ID much more difficult. There is but one reason for that. AJ knows it, Greg knows it, EVERY Democrat knows it. They simply accept fraud and corruption as a means to their common end: absolute power. Most don’t realize the implications, because they are totally stupid and ignorant of history.
@Ronald J. Ward:
After having read your useless psychobabble word salad, you still have not stated how the ” people making these laws are openly admitting they cannot win an election without limiting the people voting.”
What people? Openly admitting what? How do the election integrity laws being enacted affect minority voters adversely? Provide facts and specifics, not your rambling generalizations that hold as much water as a leaky bucket.
And don’t give me the words of a radical racialist who has clearly expressed his hatred for not only Republicans but white people, as well, just because he works for the NYSlimes.
But I suspect, as with all subjects you tackle, you have no straight forward answers, only your proven hatred and unproven accusations of those not standing on your side of the aisle or who have a lighter skin tone than you do.
@retire05:
“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,”
Donald J. Trump
“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Wayne Bertsch, who handles local and legislative races for Republicans, stated he knew targeting Democrats was the goal. “In the races I was involved in in 2008, when we started seeing the increase of turnout and the turnout operations that the Democrats were doing in early voting, it certainly sent a chill down our spines. And in 2008, it didn’t have the impact that we were afraid of. It got close, but it wasn’t the impact that they had this election cycle,”
“This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives,” Georgia State House Speaker David Ralston said of proposals that will “certainly drive up turnout.”
“Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places,” Justin Clark, the Trump campaign adviser and legal counsel, was taped saying at a closed-door meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Association chapter in Wisconsin last year. “Let’s start playing offense a little bit,” Clark told the Republican lawyers group. “That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.”
Republicans
Republicans Admit They Lose When Elections Are Fair and Free
/” rel=”nofollow ugc”>Admit
They Lose When Elections Are Fair and FreeTop Trump adviser: Republicans have ‘always‘ relied on voter suppression
Some Republicans Acknowledge Leveraging Voter ID Laws for Political Gain
In Supreme Court, GOP attorney defends voting restrictions by saying they help Republicans win
This Republican lawyer just totally exposed the Trump campaign’s voter suppression efforts
@Ronald J. Ward: You simply support the furtherance of the fraud Democrats had to use to “win” in 2020. That’s why you all lie about the Georgia law and why you all lie about the “Shoving It Up The Citizen’s Ass Law” currently under consideration.
@Deplorable Me:
Trump cultist who still believe in the Big Lie and have no perception of reality would obviously not be able to see what is before their eyes on GOP admitted voter suppression. Or it could be that you also believe like Nathan that the poor, black, and young people or, anyone voting for a Democrat should see “hurdles” to vote because of some mental argument?
@Ronald J. Ward:
@Ronald J. Ward: Again, funny how NO ONE can ever refute any of the evidence of widespread voter fraud.
@DrJohn: You can lead a horse’s ass to water, but you can’t make him think.
@Ronald J. Ward:
As expected, you can’t give answers based on your own opinion or knowledge, but rather have to rely on articles from left wing sources written by left wing hacks and registered Democrat “journalists.”
Your NBC article is a disgrace that simply lied about what the lawyer actually said in the USSC. But then, the left wing media will never be known for truthfulness so there’s that.
So when you actually have an opinion that is your own, based on fact and not idealistic bullshit, let us know.
@Deplorable Me:
Not even a little.
You people have rigged the election in very sneaky ways, most notably making it easy for unthinking American’s to slide their idiot opinions in the ballot box.
Here’s the scenario:
THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY, in three easy steps.
1. Infiltrate three institutions that control public opinion: Ed, Media, and Entertainment. Pump those full of radical ideologies and purge them of those who offer any challenge or disagreement.
2. Build on a non-existent fear, and obscure actual data to vilify the opposition (Example: accusing a demonstrably Black-aiding President of racism by using the propaganda outlets above, or preying on ignorance to incite the Floyd riots when things were, factually, less racist and better than ever before regarding police and death of blacks).
3. Make voting “mandatory” as to rake in the false and propaganda-made opinions to gain the Tyranny of the Majority. Destroy all blocks, such as IDs, the EC, etc.
You yourself are not a legal voter, by way of your idiot opinion of things that is simply party-fed brainwashing.
Your vote is invalid, as is anyone voting from a place of hate and pop-cultural coherence rather than thinking for themselves.
But hey, don’t be troubled. Every one of my Latino and Eastern European friends has told me: “once they rig an election, it’s over. It never goes back.”
Hope you’re getting some practice in at the range. A lot of other people are.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Not at all. I voted for Democrats this election cycle. The issue is you and you people are not voting for Democrats, your voting for power and a hatred of those you know don’t make excuses…like you do.
I personally like Gabbard and my own Governor, Jared Polis.
The Cathy Newman style “so your saying” instantly disqualifies you from rational discussion, little guy.
Try harder.
@DrJohn:
Your headline is deceiving on several fronts as WAPO didn’t add “it expands opportunity to most Georgians” to their headline as that was something Daily Wire mislead with and you naturally, as you do, jumped on.
Also, the Biden factcheck pertained strictly to his misstatement that voting hours had been lowered rather than the, shall we say, “redistributed” as allowed by GA, along with the many other obstacles thrown at voters to play to their electoral advantage, which I gave a list of their very own admissions.
These obstacles by the way, seem to be pleasing to your flock of loyalists as they’ve conceded the true goal was to prevent “duped poor, black, and young people to vote Democrat because they don’t know any better” because, well, as they say. “hurdles” are so needed because they are
And I could wade further into the disturbing hypocrisy and contradictions of your flock but your very response completely ignores my original comment of your grasping of voter ID to somehow in some imaginary world validate your acceptance of the GOP’s admitted assault on limiting legal Americans from utilizing their right to vote-which you say isn’t really their right at all which your flock argues is their right yet needs to be obstructed if they vote for Democrats. One has to wonder which way you Trump loyalist will shift next.
There’s seriously no limit to your unhinged hypocrisy, dishonesty, and disregard of reality. I’m sure you make Trump proud. For what reason can only be deduced.
@Ronald J. Ward:
He LIED. Others have told the same lie.
What obstacles? Voting availabilities are expanded and enhanced. You really want more fraud, don’t you? Don’t cry; Democrats will find other ways to cheat. They always do.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Yup. It’s called “fair standards for all Americans” so nutjobs like you can’t steal the vote of poor/black people by making them your voting cattle slaves.
That’s not democracy. That’s tyranny.
Just because I’m black and poor doesn’t mean I get someone to hand-hold me to the ballot box and make sure I pull the lever for the Party who paid them to guide me there.
@Deplorable Me:
I intentionally triggers his dumbass by using the language that predictably spins up such a low-thinking drone like him.
They mis-frame the issue…mostly because their propaganda outlets program them to.
He simply can’t address the things I”ve said: that when you use billions on propaganda to prey on the weak, you can’t call that democracy. It’s the opposite: tyranny.
People like Ron/AJ are going to get a lot of other people killed if they are not kept in check. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying.
@Nathan Blue: People like AJ listened to this idiot Biden lie and voted for him. Now they listen to him lie and parrot his lies. Racists love to hear other racists lie.
@Deplorable Me: Actually, you can see Ron/AJ’s brain melting out of his ears as he struggles to accept what he voted for:
Job loss
Higher Taxes
Segregation
An open border that is destabilizing Mexico, killing kids, and spreading Covid.
The best he can say? “Nuh uh! That’s not true!”
The Biden Occupation is, plainly, meant to destroy America for some unseen purpose, most likely a globalized government that using the plandemic to get us all on a tracking and social credit system.
The best solution for preventing Leftists from rigging elections?
Only those who pay taxes get to vote. That gets rid of about 40% or so of the population.
If you don’t pay in, you don’t get a say.
@Nathan Blue:
This amplifies why you were wrong in your predictions that Trump would win, why you are wrong believing in the Big Lie, and why the desperate need for the GOP to do everything in their power to rig future elections.
Additionally, it’s a known fact that Republicans wouldn’t have had a prayer of seeing a majority in the House in the last decade nor would they have a glimmer of a chance to retake it if it weren’t for the gerrymandering they’ve been able to pull off (aka rigging elections).
It just isn’t enough for them to keep it or any other chambers in the near future.
By David Adkins
By now oceans of pixels have been spilled about the nationwide Republican efforts to suppress Democratic-leaning votes. The most recent legislation in Georgia, restricting voting in myriad discriminatory ways and signed in the shadow of a painting of a slave plantation, is only the beginning. The broad reasons for this hardly need restating for engaged readers of the Monthly: Republicans are facing a demographic doom spiral. Despite Trump’s modest gains among non-whites, people of color remain firmly in the Democratic column and represent a fast-growing portion of the population. Suburban dwellers and people in cities have shifted blue, and the compensating red-shift among rural whites is not enough to maintain a majority coalition. The younger the generation, the more they despise Republicans–nor is there any indication that Millennials are shifting more conservative as they hit their 30s and 40s. And so on.
The result is that Republicans must increasingly hold power through minority rule–both by consolidating unjust structural advantages in the gerrymandered House and the malapportioned Senate and Electoral College, and by suppressing the votes of the majority liberal-left coalition. The Republican Party had a choice to try to moderate its behavior and appeal to disenchanted voters, or to double down on unpopular white supremacy, patriarchy, religious extremism and voter suppression, on a path toward open apartheid and authoritarianism. It chose the latter. This is all open knowledge, though the mainstream press sometimes has difficulty calling it like it is.
But less widely discussed is the fascinating unfolding dynamic in the Republican base itself. Republicans increasingly need to pass draconian voter suppression laws not only to quell a growing body of opposition votes, but to keep their own base engaged. It is stated only in euphemisms and hushed tones, but there is genuine terror in the Republican establishment that conservative voters will simply tune out if these measures are not passed. The Big Lie—endlessly repeated in false, unsubstantiated and often defamatory claims by conservative media—that Trump really won the 2020 election but was denied power through fraud is particularly important in explaining this phenomenon.
As some Republican pollsters have been noting, there is an irony in the GOP’s attempts to suppress votes: Republican turnout in the 2020 election was remarkably strong. Much to the horror of more liberal Americans, Trump really did succeed where a generation of Republican politicians before him had failed: he energized and persuaded a large number of low-voting-frequency social conservatives to cast ballots for him and downballot conservatives. It wasn’t enough to save him from an even bigger onslaught of horrified anti-Trump voters, but it was enough to surprise the entire political establishment in both parties by overperforming public and private polling by several points, picking up House seats and holding unexpected ground in the Senate. The strength of the Republican turnout, the fervor for Trump among his base, the unanimity of pro-Trump opinion in red districts, the COVID-related discrepancy between Trump’s big rallies and Biden’s more tempered events, and the epistemic closure among consumers of conservative media only fueled the certainty among GOP voters that Trump must have won and must have been cheated.
The December special election result in Georgia that handed control of the Senate to Democrats was a huge wake-up call to the GOP. It wasn’t just a confirmation that the Sun Belt is slipping away from them in a dramatic realignment. It wasn’t just that Democratic-leaning voters were hyper-enthusiastic even in a special election. It was also that their own voters were disengaged as a result of Trump’s lies. GOP turnout in the Georgia special elections was lower than expected, even though Republicans normally overperform in special elections, and it was the last chance to stop a trifecta of Democratic control of government.
But it makes sense. After all, if you wrongly believe that every major election is being stolen by nefarious forces, why bother voting? There were numerous anecdotes of conservative voters saying they might as well stay home in Georgia, since they thought the November election had been stolen from them. The conservative base’s crisis of faith in democracy was only reinforced by the surging prominence of authoritarian QAnon-adjacent hopes for a coup, and by the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. A large number of conservative voters no longer believe that their grievances can be remedied through democratic means—either because they believe that elections themselves have been compromised, or because they know their policy goals are at odds with those of the growing majority. As Greg Sargent rightly notes, the Big Lie has become a cancer on the party, damaging not only their voters’ faith in democracy but also their own future voter mobilization efforts.
The potential downside future for Republicans is frightening. Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2022, and the realigning Democratic coalition is now composed of higher-propensity suburban voters. Republicans, meanwhile, relied on strong turnout from low-propensity conservative voters in both 2016 and 2020, but got shellacked in the 2018 midterm. History suggests that presidential parties lose votes thermostatically in a midterm cycle, but there is no guarantee that those historical outcomes will hold sway in a post-Trump hyperpartisan era.
If Trump isn’t on the ballot in 2024, there is no guarantee that whoever takes up the GOP banner will be able to turn out Trump’s low-propensity base in the same way. Things could be especially dire if even the “normie” Republican voter believes conservative media lies that elections are rigged against them, coupled with a possible post-COVID economic resurgence and era of good feelings under Biden.
In short, it’s not just that Republicans have to keep the emerging Democratic majority from being able to vote and using their majority to govern. Republicans must also try to convince their base that they’ve “solved” the “problem” somehow, just to make them come back to the election booth.
There are no easy ways out of this trap for the GOP. But passing federal voting rights legislation like H.R.1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would not only make it easier for Americans to vote and help put an end racist voter suppression schemes: it would also potentially help force the GOP to de-escalate their attempts at apartheid authoritarian control, step back from the Big Lie, end dependence for survival on a low-propensity, shrinking base of social conservatives, and shift away from Trumpism and toward a vision that can appeal to a true majority of the American people. Democracy itself may well depend on it.
@Ronald J. Ward: You speak more when you have less to say.
We don’t know who won the 2020 election. I contend that, yes, when you remove the fraud, copied, and invalid votes, Trump won cleanly…but we just don’t know. I’d be saying the same thing if Trump won under such fraudulent circumstances.
But we can never know, since your Party took a shit on the process…kind of like you do instead of debating anything logically.
Your Trump derangement exemplifies the issue. You don’t know what you voted for, and now can only sputter on about Trump instead of having integrity and calling out this idiot Biden and his daily disasters.
Trump was both effective and efficient, and one of the best US Presidents in all of History. It’s fact. None of your criticisms can hold up to actual analysis.
That’s the point: to end democratic process by simply bullying people into submission. When people like me stop voting, it’s because we started fighting.
I’d turn back now. Hope you’re hitting the gun range. A lot of other people. The greatest and largest democracy in the history of the world isn’t going to just roll over because a feckless beta-male like you asked it to.
Leftists/Democrats are hardly the majority, and did not win this election on legal votes. It’s fact.
Even you know you live in something new: it’s the United States of America anymore, especially when Dictator Biden is now purging the military of those not in the fold.
You know you’re supporting tyranny. It eats you up, thus the silly tirades.
You were duped, son. Sorry to tell you.
@Ronald J. Ward:
No surprise you would post tripe from David Atkins, a DNC Committeeman, and rabid hater of anyone who is not lockstep with his philosophies. Of course, upon the (fraudulent) election of Beijing Biden, Atkins wanted to “deprogram” anyone who supported Trump. His twitter comments:
“No seriously…how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook?
We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South.”
What did he have in mind? Reeducation camps? Nice. Nevermind that he holds a place at the DNC table that is just below National Chairman.
And still, you have not one original thought of your own.
@Nathan Blue:
Your views of Trump’s effectiveness or ineffectiveness has no bearing on the issue other than perhaps you view him as an infallible god which justifies your denial of the election results.
The fact that you cannot accept the results and that you likely view Trump as an infallible god is consistent with your overall denial of reality in general. Considering Trump could do no wrong in your mind, any and every act that is advantageous to him can obviously not be wrong- including rigging elections and shooting babies. We’ve been watching this Trump Cult movie repeat itself for over 4 years.
@retire05:
As usual you attack the messenger because you disapprove of the message.
@Ronald J. Ward:
I attacked the messenger because Atkins is nothing more than a radical Socialist/Communist hack from California that the DNC is rife with. Of course, his main talking points are “racism, racism, racism” along with his Socialist/Communist goals.
And you violate Federal law by not linking to his article. Maybe the administrator here at FA should turn you in since you seem to violate copyright laws regularly.
@retire05:
The main point was the changing demographics, more states turning purple, more Black and Hispanic voters not likely to vote for the plutocratic party, that the GOP really haven’t even ran on a platform for years, the lost of interest of Trump voters due to the thinking it’s rigged anyway, and that Trump won’t be running in 2022 and possibly beyond which brings the need for the Party of Trump to work harder keeping the Blacks, Hispanics, the poor, and the youth away.
And it doesn’t help the plutocrats that Biden’s policies are making such a big hit with voters.
If me posting the name of the writer isn’t good enough for you, turn me in or sue me.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Perhaps you really need to look at the current trend in minority voters. See, like all Democrats, you think minority voters are too damn stupid to figure things out for themselves. But they are not. They understand that the claim of the GOP being the “plutocratic” party is so very 19th century and that it is the Democrat Party that is now in the pockets of the wealthiest in our nation, those of big tech.
You, and your party do not have a lock solid hold on the Hispanic vote. And the Hispanic vote is going to make the black vote immaterial in just a few years. Why do you think Biden is letting our borders be overrun? He (foolishly) thinks they will vote for Democrats if the Democrats can just get enough illegals to vote. Fortunately, the Democrat Party doesn’t understand American Hispanics or those who have fled actual Communist countries.
What you know about politics could be put in the eye of a gnat.
Nothing like giving someone $1,400.00 to make them like you, that is until the money is gone and you’re broke again. Beijing Biden’s handling of the border is now at 34% approval. Think that is going to get better when people realize how their own towns and cities are being affected in six months from now?
You’re the typical leftist; rules are made for others, not you.
@retire05:
Well, you know, you could look at that current trend and provide some kind of data or such to defend your adamant claim: “They understand that the claim of the GOP being the “plutocratic” party is so very 19th century and that it is the Democrat Party that is now in the pockets of the wealthiest in our nation, those of big tech.” That’s no more than floppingaces sockpuppet bullshit, no relationship with polls or data from any reputable source.
It’s much like your defense of repeatedly debunked The Big Lie which has no standing from any court or any credible news source or data.
The problem seems to be that it isn’t that the facts and reality aren’t in front of you to see but rather you just refuse to see. You depend on the lying ilk of Trump, QAnon, Hannity, Kalleyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee, Kayleigh McEnany and even the unhinged conspiracy theory sites that, as Jake trapper said (which I know you’ll dismiss because he doesn’t suck a lying Trump ass) “lies like ‘most people breathe”.
I’ve said repeatedly that the problem of the Trump cult is that they’ve been conditioned to refuse to consider what is true from sources they’ve been instructed to while unconditionally believe blatant liars.
Until you can at least entertain the argument of those you’ve been demanded to close your ears to and at least question (or perhaps anonymously research from some reputable source that they haven’t yet forbidden you to), there’s little hope that you will ever know or be able to make a rational decision on what the constituents wants or doesn’t want.
I get your argument of the $1400 and to be honest, I have my reservations of these socialist handout myself. But that doesn’t exonerate the Rs from spending like drunken sailors and exploding the deficit in order to redistribute around $2 trillion to their wealthy donors through their tax scam-which did nothing in providing jobs or actually helping the working class.
And this is the tip of the iceberg of our plutocratic party’s lies. Argue the policies all you like but I’m talking about appealing to voters and actually helping someone other than corporate donors. By all appearances, it looks like the Dems have finally grown a spine. The plutocratic party of Trump doesn’t like that and that is why they need to keep as many Democratic voting Americans away from the polls as possible.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Still waiting on someone to debunk any portion of it. None have as yet.
@Deplorable Me:
Wait just a bit longer.
Oh, by the way, I’m not laughing with you.
@Ronald J. Ward: Oh, we’ll wait forever for some lying liberal such as yourself to refute the first bit of evidence of fraud… because it will never happen. Like you say, wait longer because YOU damn sure have no answers. The laugh is on you; everyone knows the left lies about election fraud, which is why they avoid any substantive discussions of the facts. The REAL laugh is you liars who have no credibility saying, “No fraud. Trust us.” No, liars don’t have trust.
@Ronald J. Ward:
So you’re wanting me to quote some so-called “journalist”, or perhaps a DNC hack like you did to prove what I know from personal experience and working with minorities to get them registered to vote? Put your hand on your bare ass and wait until they grow together.
Really? So minorities are unaware that those of super wealth like Jeff Bezos and the other tech giants are the money men of the DNC? Is that your claim? Instead, you blather on about plutocrats when most minorities, due to our pathetic educational system, don’t know a robber baron from a Red Baron cheese pizza.
Jake Tapper knows a lot about lying. He is proficient at it. He is also proficient at sucking.
Shall we talk about who benefitted from the spending the Democrats have done since January 1, 2021? How much of the Covid Relief Bill actually was spent on Covid relief for everyday Americans? How much of the new spending bills being proposed by Beijing Biden is actually going to help everyday Americans? Instead, Beijing Biden is meeting with “historians” like the racist Michael Eric Dyson who are telling Beijing Joe to “go bold, go big” and spend, spend, spend making FDR look like a penny pincher.
Your party, and it’s members who are nothing but Chinese boot lickers, would be wise to heed the words of Henry Cuellar.
Some interesting points in today’s New York Times.
I realized the flock of indoctrinated here aren’t allowed to accept the NYT and have been commanded to obediently and mindlessly reject any reporting as fake news but if you were to compare their reporting to the 98 page bill, they’re the same thing.
Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots.
Page 38: Not m̶o̶r̶e̶ earlier than 1̶8̶0̶ 78 days or less than 11 days prior to the date of the primary or election, or runoff of either, in which the elector desires to vote, any absentee elector may make, either by mail, by facsimile transmission, by electronic transmission, or in person in the registrar’s or absentee ballot clerk’s office, an application for an official ballot of the elector’s precinct to be voted at such primary, election, or runoff.
Georgia has cut by more than half the period during which voters may request an absentee ballot, from nearly six months before an election to less than three.
This will almost certainly reduce the number of people who seek absentee ballots and the number of people who vote. In the last presidential election, 1.3 million Georgians — about 26 percent of the state’s electorate — voted with absentee ballots. Of those who returned absentee ballots in 2020, 65 percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and 34 percent chose Donald J. Trump.
The shorter window will also limit opportunities for get-out-the-vote efforts and could put greater strain on local election boards, which will have less time to process ballot requests.
There are strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots.
Page 38: In order to confirm the identity of the voter, such form shall require the elector to provide his or her name, date of birth, address as registered, address where the elector wishes the ballot to be mailed, and the number of his or her Georgia driver’s license or identification card issued … If such elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license or identification card … the elector shall affirm this fact in the manner prescribed in the application and the elector shall provide a copy of a form of identification … The form made available by the Secretary of State shall include a space to affix a photocopy or electronic image of such identification.
Page 57: In order to verify that the absentee ballot was voted by the elector who requested the ballot, the elector shall print the number of his or her Georgia driver’s license number or identification card … in the space provided on the outer oath envelope. The elector shall also print his or her date of birth in the space provided in the outer oath envelope.
If the elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license or state identification card … the elector shall so affirm in the space provided on the outer oath envelope and print the last four digits of his or her social security number in the space provided on the outer oath envelope.
If the elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license, identification card … or a social security number, the elector shall so affirm in the space provided on the outer oath envelope and place a copy of one of the forms of identification in the outer envelope
Previously, Georgia law required voters to simply sign their absentee ballot applications. Now they will have to provide the number from a driver’s license or an equivalent state-issued identification. This is virtually certain to limit access to absentee voting.
The law also creates pitfalls for voters: If they fail to follow all the new steps, like printing a date of birth or in some cases including partial Social Security numbers, their ballots could be tossed out. Mr. Trump’s lawyers and allies urged judges and Republican officials last year to invalidate some ballots that were out of compliance. Stringent voter-ID laws in other states have depressed voting mostly among people of color.
It’s now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.
Page 39: A blank application for an absentee ballot shall be made available online by the Secretary of State and each election superintendent and registrar, but neither the Secretary of State, election superintendent, board of registrars, other governmental entity, nor employee or agent thereof shall send absentee ballot applications directly to any elector except upon request of such elector or a relative authorized to request an absentee ballot for such elector.
No person or entity other than a relative authorized to request an absentee ballot for such elector or a person signing as assisting an illiterate or physically disabled elector shall send any elector an absentee ballot application that is prefilled with the elector’s required information set forth in this subparagraph.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, mailed absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in the state ahead of its June primary election. This led to absentee voting by record numbers of Georgians.
When Mr. Raffensperger didn’t mail applications again for the general election, several local government agencies did so, particularly in Georgia’s large urban counties — a move that the state has now made illegal. With the loss of automatically mailed applications, some voters will invariably not request ballots, since the applications also served as a reminder to people that they were eligible to vote.
The new law also forbids third-party groups to prefill applications for voters, which made applying for an absentee ballot easier for many voters.
Drop boxes still exist … but barely.
Page 47: A board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk may establish additional drop boxes … but may only establish additional drop boxes totaling the lesser of either one drop box for every 100,000 active registered voters in the county or the number of advance voting locations in the county. Any additional drop boxes shall be evenly geographically distributed by population in the county.
Drop boxes … shall be established at the office of the board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk or inside locations at which advance voting … is conducted in the applicable primary, election, or runoff and may be open during the hours of advance voting at that location. Such drop boxes shall be closed when advance voting is not being conducted at that location.
For the 2020 election, there were 94 drop boxes across the four counties that make up the core of metropolitan Atlanta: Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett. The new law limits the same four counties to a total of, at most, 23 drop boxes, based on the latest voter registration data. The number could be lower depending on how many early-voting sites the counties provide.
There won’t just be fewer drop boxes. Instead of 24-hour access outdoors, the boxes must be placed indoors at government buildings and early-voting sites and will thus be unavailable for voters to drop off their ballots during evenings and other nonbusiness hours.
The measure is likely to have the effect of pushing absentee voters to return ballots through the mail, which in 2020 did not prove as reliable as in the past because of cuts to the Postal Service.
Mobile voting centers (think an R.V. where you can vote) are essentially banned.
Page 31: The superintendent of a county or the governing authority of a municipality shall have discretion to procure and provide portable or movable polling facilities of adequate size for any precinct; provided, however, that buses and other readily movable facilities shall only be used in emergencies declared by the Governor … to supplement the capacity of the polling place where the emergency circumstance occurred.
Last year, Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, had two recreational vehicles that traversed the county during the early voting periods, effectively bringing polling sites to people at churches, parks and public libraries. In the November election, more than 11,200 people voted at the two vehicles in Fulton County.
Georgia has now outlawed this practice, unless the governor declares a state of emergency to allow it — something that Mr. Kemp, a Republican, is unlikely to do given that it could increase voter turnout in Atlanta.
Early voting is expanded in a lot of small counties, but probably not in more populous ones.
Page 59: There shall be a period of advance voting that shall commence: (A) On the fourth Monday immediately prior to each primary or election; and (̶B̶)̶ ̶O̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶m̶m̶e̶d̶i̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶;̶ ̶(̶C̶)̶ ̶O̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶m̶m̶e̶d̶i̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶d̶i̶d̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶;̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶(̶D̶)̶(B) As soon as possible prior to a runoff from any o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ general primary or election i̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶y̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶d̶i̶d̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ but no later than the second Monday immediately prior to such runoff and shall end on the Friday immediately prior to each primary, election, or runoff.
Voting shall be conducted d̶u̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶o̶r̶m̶a̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶s̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶s̶ beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m. on weekdays, other than observed state holidays, during such period and shall be conducted on the second S̶a̶t̶u̶r̶d̶a̶y̶ and third Saturdays during the hours of 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. and, if the registrar or absentee ballot clerk so chooses, the second Sunday, the third Sunday, or both the second and third Sundays prior to a primary or election during the hours o̶f̶ ̶9̶ ̶a̶.̶m̶.̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶4̶ ̶p̶.̶m̶.̶ determined by the registrar or absentee ballot clerk, but no longer than 7 a.m. through 7 p.m.
Page 60: Except as otherwise provided in this paragraph, c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶u̶n̶i̶c̶i̶p̶a̶l̶i̶t̶i̶e̶s̶ the registrars may extend the hours for voting b̶e̶y̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶u̶l̶a̶r̶ ̶b̶u̶s̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶s̶ to permit advance voting from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. and may provide for additional voting locations … to suit the needs of the electors of the jurisdiction at their option; provided, however, that voting shall occur only on the days specified in this paragraph and counties and municipalities shall not be authorized to conduct advance voting on any other days.
These new strict rules on early voting hours are likely to curtail voting access for Georgians who work daytime hours or have less flexible schedules and who may be unable to return an absentee ballot.
The provision requires counties to hold early voting during weekday working hours — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. — and says it may be held for longer but may not take place before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. on those days. The early voting period will begin four weeks before an election. The previous iteration of the law called only for early voting during “normal business hours” and left it up to counties to determine those hours.
The provision also adds a second required Saturday of early voting (the previous law required only one), which will increase access to early voting in most of the state’s rural counties, where election administrators have often been short-staffed and have offered fewer hours of early voting. Most larger counties in the state already offered multiple weekend days of early voting.
The law doesn’t require the availability of early voting on Sundays, which means that counties can choose whether to open for early voting on up to two Sundays before an election.
Counties that choose not to open on Sundays would be limiting ballot access for parishioners at Black churches that have often organized parishioners to vote after Sunday services.
Offering food or water to voters waiting in line now risks misdemeanor charges.
Page 73: No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector, nor shall any person solicit signatures for any petition, nor shall any person, other than election officials discharging their duties, establish or set up any tables or booths on any day in which ballots are being cast: (1) Within 150 feet of the outer edge of any building within which a polling place is established; (2) Within any polling place; or (3) Within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place. These restrictions shall not apply to conduct occurring in private offices or areas which cannot be seen or heard by such electors.
This Code section shall not be construed to prohibit a poll officer from distributing materials, as required by law, which are necessary for the purpose of instructing electors or from distributing materials prepared by the Secretary of State which are designed solely for the purpose of encouraging voter participation in the election being conducted or from making available self-service water from an unattended receptacle to an elector waiting in line to vote.
Perhaps no provision in the Georgia law has received more attention than this one, which effectively bars third-party groups or anyone else who is not an election worker from providing food and water to voters waiting in line. Republicans defended the provision, saying it is enforceable only within a 150-foot radius of polling places. Civil rights groups note that it also prevents assistance “within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place.”
Long lines for voting in Georgia are an unfortunate reality, and are often found in the poorer, densely populated communities that tend to vote Democratic. During the primary election last June, when temperatures hovered above 80 degrees with high humidity, multiple voting locations across the state had lines in which voters waited more than two hours.
Numerous studies have shown that long lines deter people from voting. According to research by the Bipartisan Policy Center, an independent research group, over 560,000 voters did not cast ballots in 2016 “because of problems related to polling place management, including long lines.” In 2014, Stephen Pettigrew, then a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard’s department of government, conducted a study that found that more than 200,000 voters did not vote in the midterm elections that year because they had faced long lines during the 2012 election.
The new law does make it clear that it is legal for voters to drink from a water fountain, if one exists along the line to vote and provided they get the water themselves.
If you go to the wrong polling place, it will be (even) harder to vote.
Page 74: If a person presents himself or herself at a polling place, absentee polling place, or registration office in his or her county of residence in this state for the purpose of casting a ballot in a primary or election stating a good faith belief that he or she has timely registered to vote in such county of residence in such primary or election and the person’s name does not appear on the list of registered electors, the person shall be entitled to cast a provisional ballot in his or her county of residence in this state as provided in this Code section.
If the person presents himself or herself at a polling place in the county in which he or she is registered to vote, but not at the precinct at which he or she is registered to vote, the poll officials shall inform the person of the polling location for the precinct where such person is registered to vote.
The poll officials shall also inform such person that any votes cast by a provisional ballot in the wrong precinct will not be counted unless it is cast after 5 p.m. and before the regular time for the closing of the polls on the day of the primary, election, or runoff and unless the person executes a sworn statement, witnessed by the poll official, stating that he or she is unable to vote at his or her correct polling place prior to the closing of the polls and giving the reason therefor.
From 2012 to 2018, Georgia shuttered more than 214 voting precincts around the state, according to an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Those changes, many of which followed the Supreme Court’s hollowing out of the federal Voting Rights Act in 2013, confused many voters, who upon showing up to the wrong precinct had to vote with provisional ballots.
This provision removes even that remedy for voters who arrive at the wrong precinct before 5 p.m., requiring them to instead travel to the correct precinct or risk being disenfranchised.
Casting a provisional ballot after showing up at the wrong precinct was by far the most common reason for voting provisionally in the 2020 election in Georgia; roughly 44 percent of provisional ballots in the state were from “out of precinct voters,” according to data from the secretary of state’s office. And in Fulton County, 66 percent of the accepted provisional ballots were from “out of precinct” voters.
Of the 11,120 provisional ballots that were counted in the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Biden won 64 percent and Mr. Trump took 34 percent.
If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours.
Page 72: Poll hours at a precinct may be extended only by order of a judge of the superior court of the county in which the precinct is located upon good cause shown by clear and convincing evidence that persons were unable to vote at that precinct during a specific period or periods of time. Poll hours shall not be extended longer than the total amount of time during which persons were unable to vote at such precinct. Any order extending poll hours at a precinct beyond 9 p.m. shall be by written order with specific findings of fact supporting such extension.
This is a small change, but it could have a significant impact on whether voting hours can be extended in the event of a problem.
Previously, a judge could order that a precinct stay open for as long as necessary based on a problem that had hindered voting (for example, if power went out for 30 minutes, the judge could add an hour of balloting at the end of the day). The new provision requires any relief period to match exactly the amount of time that people were unable to vote.
Georgia is no stranger to Election Day mishaps and problems. Its primary last June was marred by hourslong lines caused by malfunctioning machines. Some precincts had no choice but to ask every voter to file a provisional ballot. Other precincts stayed open later into the night.
Under the new law, if similar election problems were to occur, voters who had to leave would have less time to come back later.
With a mix of changes to vote-counting, high-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results.
Page 65: Beginning at 8 a.m. on the third Monday prior to A̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶l̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ the day of the primary, election, or runoff, t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶i̶s̶t̶r̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶b̶s̶e̶n̶t̶e̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶c̶l̶e̶r̶k̶s̶ election superintendent shall be authorized to open the outer oath envelope o̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶o̶r̶ of absentee ballots that have been verified and accepted i̶n̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶n̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶t̶r̶o̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶o̶n̶;̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶v̶i̶d̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶e̶v̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶i̶s̶t̶r̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶b̶s̶e̶n̶t̶e̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶c̶l̶e̶r̶k̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶a̶u̶t̶h̶o̶r̶i̶z̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶remove the contents of such outer envelope,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ open the inner envelope marked ‘Official Absentee Ballot,’ e̶x̶c̶e̶p̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶w̶i̶s̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶v̶i̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶C̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ and scan the absentee ballot using one or more ballot scanners.
At least three persons who are registrars, deputy registrars, poll workers, or absentee ballot clerks must be present before commencing; and three persons who are registrars, deputy registrars, or absentee ballot clerks shall be present at all times while the o̶u̶t̶e̶r̶ absentee ballot envelopes are being opened and the absentee ballots are being scanned. A̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶e̶n̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶s̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶f̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶u̶r̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶u̶n̶t̶i̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶a̶b̶u̶l̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶s̶.̶
However, no person shall tally, tabulate, estimate, or attempt to tally, tabulate, or estimate or cause the ballot scanner or any other equipment to produce any tally or tabulate, partial or otherwise, of the absentee ballots cast until the time for the closing of the polls on the day of the primary, election, or runoff except as provided in this Code section.
One key factor in how widely Mr. Trump and his allies were able to spread falsehoods about the 2020 election was that it took more than two weeks for news outlets to declare that President Biden had won Georgia. With such a long delay, Republicans successfully sowed doubts about the election’s validity by baselessly arguing that fraud must have taken place.
Georgia Republicans’ new voting law does allow the absentee ballot counting process to begin much earlier, with local clerks allowed to open and inspect absentee ballots three weeks before an election.
Still, no ballots can be counted until the polls close, meaning the process of tabulating and reporting vote totals is likely to be lengthy for high-turnout contests. That could lead future candidates to follow Mr. Trump’s lead in trying to contest the results of a legitimate election.
Election officials can no longer accept third-party funding (a measure that nods to right-wing conspiracy theories).
Page 18: No superintendent shall take or accept any funding, grants, or gifts from any source other than from the governing authority of the county or municipality, the State of Georgia, or the federal government. The State Election Board shall study and report to the General Assembly a proposed method for accepting donations intended to facilitate the administration of elections and a method for an equitable distribution of such donations state wide by October 1, 2021.
Last year, as election officials faced countless challenges trying to hold voting during a pandemic, funding for the November general election became tied up in the political debate over the second stimulus package.
Many local election jurisdictions in Georgia and other states, particularly those in poorer urban areas, turned to outside philanthropic groups like the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit organization funded by Mark Zuckerberg that helped counties pay for their elections in 2020. Now Georgia has eliminated that option.
Conspiracy theories in right-wing circles have long focused on the specter of nefarious outsiders swaying election operations with donations; the theories often involve anti-Semitic falsehoods about George Soros, the billionaire liberal donor, who is also Jewish.
With an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage an election hotline.
Page 8: The Attorney General shall have the authority to establish and maintain a telephone hotline for the use of electors of this state to file complaints and allegations of voter intimidation and illegal election activities. Such hotline shall, in addition to complaints and reports from identified persons, also accept anonymous tips regarding voter intimidation and election fraud.
Complaints about possible voter intimidation and fraud had previously been run through a web of county election officials and the secretary of state before reaching the state attorney general, but this provision centralizes them and deputizes the attorney general to handle them.
Placing that responsibility within the attorney general’s office may help remove partisan influence to actions that are taken in response to complaints, but voting rights groups say it could serve as an intimidation tactic. And attorneys general themselves could bring their own partisan influence.
The Republican-controlled legislature has more control over the State Election Board.
Page 8: There is created a state board to be known as the State Election Board, to be composed of t̶h̶e̶ ̶S̶e̶c̶r̶e̶t̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ a chairperson elected by the General Assembly, an elector to be elected by a majority vote of the Senate of the General Assembly at its regular session held in each odd-numbered year, an elector to be elected by a majority vote of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly at its regular session held in each odd-numbered year, and a member of each political party to be nominated and appointed in the manner provided in this Code section. No person while a member of the General Assembly shall serve as a member of the board.
This is one of a few provisions that strip power from the secretary of state and indirectly shift it to the legislature by creating a new chair of the State Election Board. Previously, the secretary of state had served in that role.
The law dictates that the newly created chair be “nonpartisan,” but the position is appointed through the partisan legislature. Voting rights groups say this amounts to the legislature’s exerting more control over the State Election Board and election oversight in general.
The provision does contain some partisan guardrails: In the two years immediately preceding a chair’s appointment, he or she cannot have been a candidate for public office or have made any political campaign contributions.
But it also looks an awful lot like a revenge move: Republican lawmakers are taking power away from Mr. Raffensperger, who infuriated Mr. Trump and some G.O.P. leaders in the state by rebuffing the former president’s fraud claims.
The secretary of state is removed as a voting member of the State Election Board.
Page 11: The Secretary of State shall be t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶i̶r̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶a̶r̶d̶ an ex officio nonvoting member of the board. Three voting members of the board shall constitute a quorum, and no vacancy on the board shall impair the right of the quorum to exercise all the powers and perform all the duties of the board. The board shall adopt a seal for its use and bylaws for its own government and procedure.
This is a more direct attack on the powers of the secretary of state, effectively eliminating that person’s voice on the State Election Board.
Viewed through the lens of the 2020 election, this could be seen as revenge for Georgia Republicans against the current secretary of state, Mr. Raffensperger, who would not capitulate to Mr. Trump’s demands to overturn the results under a false banner of fraud.
The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials.
Page 11: The State Election Board may suspend county or municipal superintendents and appoint an individual to serve as the temporary superintendent in a jurisdiction. Such individual shall exercise all the powers and duties of a superintendent as provided by law, including the authority to make all personnel decisions related to any employees of the jurisdiction who assist with carrying out the duties of the superintendent, including, but not limited to, the director of elections, the election supervisor, and all poll officers. (g) At no time shall the State Election Board suspend more than four county or municipal superintendents pursuant to subsection (f) of this Code section.
Another power play by Republican state lawmakers. Tensions have long simmered between state and county election officials in Georgia, particularly in Fulton County, the largest Democratic hub in the state, where officials say they have been targeted and deprived of support by Republicans at the state level. Election officials in Fulton County, for their part, have had their historical share of mistakes and mismanagement.
Now the State Election Board, newly influenced by the partisan Legislature, will have the power to suspend county election officials. That part of the new law alarmed some Democratic legislators, who noted that it could particularly affect counties like Fulton, which contains 15 percent of those in the state who voted Democratic in the November election.
The law does state that the bar for suspension is high: either a minimum of three clear violations of State Election Board rules, or “demonstrated nonfeasance, malfeasance, or gross negligence in the administration of the elections” in two consecutive elections.
In the event of a suspension, the State Election Board would name a temporary replacement.
Runoff elections will happen faster — and could become harder to manage.
Page 87: In instances where no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast, a run-off primary, special primary runoff, run-off election, or special election runoff between the candidates receiving the two highest numbers of votes shall be held. Unless such date is postponed by a court order, such r̶u̶n̶-̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶,̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶,̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶-̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ runoff shall be held a̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶v̶i̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶s̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶
(̶2̶)̶ ̶I̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶j̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶T̶u̶e̶s̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶i̶n̶t̶h̶ ̶w̶e̶e̶k̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶l̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶.̶ ̶ ̶ ̶(̶3̶)̶ ̶I̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶j̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶T̶u̶e̶s̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶i̶n̶t̶h̶ ̶w̶e̶e̶k̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶l̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶ ̶ ̶(̶4̶)̶ ̶I̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶j̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ on the twenty-eighth day after the day of holding the preceding general or special primary or general or special election.
Georgia has had its fair share of runoff elections recently; both of its newly seated Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, prevailed in such contests. The shortening of the runoff election window, which Republicans say was meant to help election administrators, could also end up overburdening them, forcing a quick turnaround to hold a runoff election even as officials are still working to certify and ratify the initial general election vote.
Shortening the runoff time will also affect both early voting and military and overseas voters. While the bill states that early voting for a runoff should begin “as early as possible,” it does not specifically require weekend voting.
Additionally, federal election law states that ballots for military and overseas voters must be mailed out 45 days before an election, so those voters will now receive ranked-choice general-election ballots rather than second, separate ballots for the runoff.
@Ronald J. Ward: Let’s see… how many times has the NYT been caught spreading propaganda for the Democrats? Oh yeah… EVERY time they issue a story.
Why does the left have to lie about the Georgia and Texas election laws? Why do Democrat laws only enhance the ability to cheat and never make elections more secure? Oh, yeah… because fraud, corruption and cheating is the ONLY way Democrats know to win elections anymore. And you support it 100%.