Georgia’s new voting law
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It’s largely a solution to alleged problems that no one can prove exist.
Here you also see the GOP dumping a core Conservative principle of honoring “local control” — they enacted a new law that allows the state legislature to take over local election boards.
The GOP also voted against simple human kindness and against simple neighborly community spirit — they have made it illegal for third parties to provide food and water to voters waiting in line.
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Earl Long bought four votes for a pair of rubber boots.
I know that one for a fact...
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@axtremus said in Georgia’s new voting law:
The GOP also voted against simple human kindness and against simple neighborly community spirit — they have made it illegal for third parties to provide food and water to voters waiting in line.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/joe-biden-botches-the-georgia-voting-law/
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=Let’s take a look at what S.B. 202 actually says:
No person shall solicit votes [or] 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 [a voter] … This Code section shall not be construed to prohibit a poll officer…from making available self-service water from an unattended receptacle to [a voter] waiting in line to vote.
The parts in bold are what S.B. 202 added to the statute. The prohibition applies inside polling places, within 150 feet of a polling place, or “within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place.”
Now, first of all, notice what is not prohibited here. Voters can still bring bottled water or other food or beverages with them to stand on line to vote, as people often do when waiting at Disney World or to buy concert tickets or in other public places where people stand on long lines. Voters can still also, if they like, order food; the bill doesn’t stop the Domino’s Pizza man or the local hot dog cart or taco truck from doing business. And if you feel impelled to donate food and drink to voters, you can still do that, too; you just have to give it to the poll workers so they can put it out for general use. The president’s claim that “You can’t provide water for people about to vote” is just false. What you cannot do under the new Georgia law is deploy people in National Rifle Association t-shirts and MAGA hats to hand out free Koch-brothers-financed, Federalist Society–branded pizza to voters.
In other words, this entire controversy is not about people dropping dead of hunger and thirst on long voting lines at all. It’s about electioneering around the polling place by people looking to advertise that they represent a cause, and who try to influence voters by giving them free stuff. Across the country today, we already have lots of laws against this sort of thing. There is nothing wrong with Georgia trying to limit it.
While state laws vary, many other states have electioneering bans that prevent people from giving gifts to voters, approaching voters on line or in the process of voting, or wearing or displaying political messages around the polling place. Minnesota law has a broad ban on approaching voters:
No one except an election official or an individual who is waiting to register or to vote or an individual who is conducting exit polling shall stand within 100 feet of the building in which a polling place is located. Minn. Stat. § 204C.06
In 2018, the Supreme Court in Minn. Voters Alliance v. Mansky found that Minnesota had a valid basis for its ban on voters wearing any sort of political badge, button, or insignia inside a polling place. Chief Justice Roberts, noting that the majority of states had some restrictions on campaign-related clothing and accessories at the polls, explained:
We see no basis for rejecting Minnesota’s determination that some forms of advocacy should be excluded from the polling place, to set it aside as an island of calm in which voters can peacefully contemplate their choices. . . . Casting a vote is a weighty civic act, akin to a jury’s return of a verdict, or a representative’s vote on a piece of legislation. It is a time for choosing, not campaigning. The State may reasonably decide that the interior of the polling place should reflect that distinction.
Seven Justices joined that opinion, which nonetheless found that the law entangled Minnesota too much into deciding what messages were political; the two dissenters would have upheld the law.
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Georgia’s law follows the same line of reasoning: The obvious motive of showing up to hand things directly to voters, rather than just providing them to poll workers to distribute, is to influence their votes.
Once upon a time, American elections were different; we had no secret ballot, and openly bribing voters was considered a standard part of democracy. George Washington famously handed out whiskey on voting day when he ran for the House of Burgesses, and so did most everybody else in his era. But our laws have cracked down on those tactics for a reason.
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More at the link about "suppression" as well.
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Truth is so much more boring than rhetoric. Where is a photo of AOC weeping because people are starving and dying of dehydration in voting lines???
And why isn’t AOC at the detention centers weeping and screaming? I think they are slightly worse than her last appearance. Did she just give up?
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Biden falsely claims the new Georgia law ‘ends voting hours early’
“What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It’s sick. It’s sick … deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work.”
— Biden, in a statement “on the attack on the right to vote in Georgia,” March 26During his first news conference, President Biden became especially passionate when discussing a law being pressed by Republican lawmakers in Georgia that he said was intended to make it harder for people to vote. He reiterated those concerns the next day in a written statement after Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed the bill into law.
The law has come under fire for restricting the distribution of food and water to people standing in line, making it harder to cast absentee ballots, reducing drop boxes for mail ballots, barring mobile voting places and for making significant procedural changes that potentially give more power to the GOP-controlled legislature in the election process.
Biden has echoed many of those concerns. But there was one line in both his news conference and his statement that has kept us puzzling until our puzzler was sore. It also puzzled experts who have studied the new law.
The Facts
On Election Day in Georgia, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7 p.m., you are allowed to cast your ballot. Nothing in the new law changes those rules.
However, the law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.
“You can criticize the bill for many things, but I don’t think you can criticize it for reducing the hours you can vote,” said University of Georgia political scientist Charles S. Bullock III. He speculated that Biden may have been briefed on an early version of the bill — “there were 25 versions floating around” — and he did not get an update on the final version.
For instance, at one point lawmakers considered nixing all early voting on Sundays, thus eliminating “souls to the polls,” a get-out-the-vote initiative popular with predominantly Black churches. But that idea was scrapped in the end.
“One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early voting access for most counties, adding an additional mandatory Saturday and formally codifying Sunday voting hours as optional,” Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Broadcasting said in an excellent and comprehensive report on the impact of the new law. “Counties can have early voting open as long as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum. If you live in a larger metropolitan county, you might not notice a change. For most other counties, you will have an extra weekend day, and your weekday early voting hours will likely be longer.”
Charles Stewart III, an election expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: “I had also heard this generally reported as expanding early voting, so I’m surprised by the characterization.” He studied the precise language changes at our request and said it indicated an expansion of hours, especially in rural counties.
So where would Biden get this perception that ordinary workers were getting the shaft because the state would “end voting at five o’clock"? We have one clue.
The law used to say early “voting shall be conducted during normal business hours.” Experts said that generally means 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The new law makes it specific — “beginning at 9:00 AM and ending at 5:00 PM.” A Georgia election official said the change was made in part because some rural county election offices only worked part time during the week, not a full eight-hour day, so the shift to more specific times makes it clear they must be open every weekday for at least eight hours.
But, as noted, the law also allows individual counties to set the hours anywhere between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. So the practical effect of the 5 p.m. reference in the law is minimal.
During the 2020 election, for instance, vote-rich Fulton County, with a substantial Black population, set early-voting hours at 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on most weekdays and two Saturdays, though the last weekdays had 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. voting hours. Voting was allowed on two Sundays between 12 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Under the new law, Fulton County could set the exact same hours for in-person early voting — or expand them from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day.
Bullock noted that one change in the law may impact early voting in runoff elections. The law reduced the period between the initial election and the runoff election, from nine to four weeks, potentially shortening the period for early voting.
We were curious what the early-voting rules were in Delaware, Biden’s home state. It turns out Delaware did not allow any in-person early voting in 2020. A law signed in 2019 will permit early voting starting in 2022. (Voting hours are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day.)
We sought an explanation from the White House for the reason for Biden’s remarks but did not receive an on-the-record response.
The Pinocchio Test
Biden framed his complaint in terms of a slap at working people. The law would “end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work” or “ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.”
Many listeners might assume he was talking about voting on Election Day, not early voting. But Election Day hours were not changed.
As for early voting, the law made a modest change, replacing a vague “normal business hours” — presumed to be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. — to a more specific 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. time period. But that’s the minimum. Under the new law, counties have the option to extend the voting hours so voters can start casting ballots as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 7 p.m. — the same as Election Day in Georgia. Moreover, an additional mandatory day of early voting on Saturday was added and two days of early voting on Sunday were codified as an option for counties.
One could understand a flub in a news conference. But then this same claim popped up in an official presidential statement. Not a single expert we consulted who has studied the law understood why Biden made this claim, as this was the section of law that expanded early voting for many Georgians.
Somehow Biden managed to turn that expansion into a restriction aimed at working people, calling it “among the outrageous parts” of the law. There’s no evidence that is the case. The president earns Four Pinocchios.
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Article outlines how the Georgia state Senate and Assembly have started making moves against the Fulton election board, and explains how the state legislature can use the newly passed state election law to take over local election boards and administer elections in ways that favor the state legislature's incumbent controlling party.
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Oh, he's an idiot at times. Probably doesn't have a clue how corrupt Fulton County elections are...
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion.
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Ah, the fish turned you loose long enough to drop by...How's life?
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@jolly said in Georgia’s new voting law:
Oh, he's an idiot at times. Probably doesn't have a clue how corrupt Fulton County elections are...
I sure do. I lived in Cobb county right next to it for 16 years, and my store was in dekalb county. I can still remember how every election the democrats would bus in load after load of welfare recipients to the polls, when closing time would come the democrats would storm the polls and keep them open by force, and the common saying was "this is civil compared to what they're doing in Fulton County."
