In Georgia, Another Voting Lie Runs Rampant
Georgia has recently found itself the target of brutal attacks over SB 202, a new law intended to revise the state’s election and voting procedures by improving election integrity and security. These attacks claim that the law is “blatant, anti-democratic and anti-American voter suppression that will disproportionately impact voters of color.”
While untrue, this line of reasoning is not unfamiliar. Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate and Democratic activist Stacy Abrams has referred to the law as “nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0.” Vice President Harris commented in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the law is a “renewed attempt to suppress the ability of people to vote” and is about “suppressing our democracy.” Likewise, President Biden has described the law as “Jim Crow in the 21st century” and “an un-American law to deny people the right to vote.”
These accusations are fundamentally misguided and those making them do not understand the law’s provisions and have probably never read it. As an article in the Athens Banner-Herald notes, the new law actually expands early voting for most Georgia counties through additional mandatory Saturday voting hours and longer voting hours during the week.
It should also be noted that the law makes no changes to Election Day voting. President Biden, in one of his many nonsensical attacks on the law, alleged that it “ends voting hours early,” a comment that rightfully earned him four pinocchios from a Washington Post fact-checker.
In addition to expanding early voting, the law allows local officials to start processing absentee ballots two weeks before Election Day and requires all counties to count ballots continuously as soon as the polls close. If a county fails to count all its ballots by 5 p.m. the next day, it could face an investigation. Moreover, local officials must post and report the total number of ballots cast on election day, during early voting, via absentee voting and provisional ballots, by 10:00 p.m. on election night. These measures will ensure that the vote count is more transparent and that it will not take multiple days to know the final outcome in the increasingly competitive state.
The law even attempts to address long lines: an issue that many Democrats and their media allies have long dubbed a form of “voter suppression.” As the Athens Banner-Herald states, the law would require large polling places with long lines to take action if wait times surpass an hour at certain times during the day. Those massive polls with more than 2,000 voters and wait times longer than an hour would have to hire more staff, add more workers or split up the precinct after that election. More than 1,500 of Georgia’s precincts have over 2,000 voters.
The bill keeps drop boxes, a pandemic creation, but limits them to inside early voting sites to prevent the boxes from being tampered with, a fair concern. Additionally, as Rick Lowry notes in National Review, “The law narrows the window for requesting absentee ballots, although still allows plenty of time. A voter can request a ballot as early as eleven weeks prior to an election or as late as eleven days prior (any later date risks the completed ballot not getting delivered in time).” Moreover, to ensure that ballots are legitimate and secure, the law requires voters to provide a driver’s license or state ID number to apply for a ballot and one of these numbers, or the last four digits of a Social Security number, when returning ballots. And contrary to claims forwarded by a BLM founder, the law does not give the state the power to overturn legitimate election results.
If you missed the part where this sounds like “voter suppression” or “ Jim Crow on steroids,” then you have been paying attention. Expanded early voting, shorter lines, faster and more transparent tabulation of results, absentee requirements that aim to ensure a ballot is received on time and a simple request for an ID number: what a travesty. None of these measures amount to “voter suppression” or “regressive limitations on voters in the state.” In fact, these measures are very sensible, mainstream, and should increase voters’ confidence that their ballot will be accurately tabulated and not nullified by any improperly or illegally cast ballots, whether the occurrence is rare or not.
Moreover, there is no moral equivalency between poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, white primaries or other Jim Crow measures designed to disenfranchise significant segments of the population based on race and this law. Unless we baselessly assume that low-income individuals and minorities are incapable of acquiring a state ID or taking mere minutes to drop a ballot in a dropbox at an early voting site, there is no conceivable reason to believe that the law “places harsh limits on mail-in voting” or “effectively disenfranchis[es] voters of color and other minority groups.” Asking voters of any skin color to verify their identity is rational and reasonable.
Additionally, research suggests that voter ID has no significant impact on turnout overall or amongst any specific subgroups. It is also worth noting that black Americans, in particular, have been out-voting their percentage of the population in elections since 2008, including in states like Indiana, which has strict ID requirements. The Washington Post also noted about the law that “[E]xperts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.” This leads to a simple conclusion: there is no reason to be alarmed by voter ID measures and the Georgia law.
In fact, Georgia’s voting rules are more flexible and generous than those in many other states. New Jersey has early voting for just nine days and only requires some Election Day locations to be open for early voting. Six states: Connecticut, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have no early voting at all. The President’s home state of Delaware recently passed a law for early voting that will not take effect until next year. Most of these states do not have drop boxes at all.
Are all of these states engaging in “voter suppression” or perpetuating Jim Crow? Where is the political, media and corporate blowback from the MLB and others over these states and their supposedly restrictive voting procedures?
The answer: these states will never be targeted because they are not engaging in voter suppression, and neither is Georgia. The only reason leftists and their allies in government, media, corporations and “voting rights” organizations have launched this attack on Georgia is because they want to use the law to smear the state’s Republican leadership and convince voters to hand the state over to more Democrats in 2022. Between Stacy Abrams’ bogus claims that she lost the 2018 Georgia by over 50,000 votes because of “voter suppression” to former President Trump’s equally bogus claims that he lost Georgia by over 10,000 votes because of “massive voter fraud,” Georgia has dealt with enough lies about its voting procedures and elections. If you want to find a terrible voting law, look no further than H.R.1, a bill that seems intentionally designed to undermine confidence in elections by increasing opportunities for voter fraud and malfeasance. In the meantime, Georgia should be left alone.
A pile of "vote" stickers because of Georgia's highly contested election. Source: K Groovy Creative Commons