With just a few days to go before the legislative session ends, Republican lawmakers in both chambers of the Georgia General Assembly passed a comprehensive nearly 100-page bill on Thursday that would make radical changes to the electoral law, impacting voters, local electoral administrators. and the council that oversees the elections.
The bill, SB 202, passed a party line vote first in the House and then in the Senate. Republican Governor Brian Kemp issued a statement immediately after the Senate vote saying he planned to sign it on Thursday night.
Marc Elias, the lawyer who leads the charge on behalf of the Democrats to expand options during the pandemic, has already promised “an immediate lawsuit” if Kemp signs the bill.
Democrats and supporters of voting rights criticized the bill as a legislative and voter suppression tactic “taking power” in response to former President Donald Trump and Republican Party allies spreading false conspiracy theories about a stolen and fraudulent election for months. But Republicans say the bill increases accessibility and aims to streamline elections, provide uniformity and address the lack of confidence in Georgia’s elections “on all sides of the political spectrum”, an idea that Democrats are disputing.
The bill would expand early voting to the primary and general elections, but not to the second rounds, which is how Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock secured their seats in the Senate – and most Democrats – in January, breaking a string of decades of defeats. Democrats in statewide run-off elections.
For primary and general elections, counties should have early voting on both Saturdays and have the option to do so on the two Sundays that fall within the three-week period. The current law provides for only one Saturday of early voting. Another general election bill awaiting final votes, HB 531, originally banned early voting on Sundays, but was changed after strong resistance from Democrats and the religious community, which saw it as a direct attack on black voters who participated in the events ” Souls to the Polls “after the Sunday service.
However, this bill would shorten the period between elections and the second rounds from nine to four weeks, and while counties could start voting “as soon as possible”, the bill only requires that it be offered Monday through Friday a week before the election – a much shorter term that does not include weekend days. To complicate matters further, there is a possibility that the week will coincide with Thanksgiving Day, when many are traveling. This bill also prohibits early voting on holidays.
A provision of the bill would make it a crime for someone who is not an election worker to give food or drink to any voter who is in line to vote, a practice known as “line heating”, except for self-service water stations. In the June 2020 primaries, voters in Georgia’s largest metropolitan counties – Democratic strongholds with large minority populations – waited in line for up to eight hours.
Another provision prohibits voting outside the polling zone until 5 pm, and voters who arrive after that point must sign a statement saying that they cannot reach the polling area in time to vote. Currently, voters who appear in the wrong constituency can vote on a provisional ballot and their votes will be counted for disputes in which they were able to vote, such as state disputes.
The bill would also eliminate the signature matching process to verify postal ballots and, instead, require voters to provide their driver’s license or state identification number, or a photocopy of another accepted identity document, if the voter don’t have them.
Although an audit examining signatures in Georgia’s third largest county did not find fraudulent ballots, this verification process was the source of much of the former president’s post-election wrath. Major Republicans, like the governor, endorsed the shift from this “subjective” to a “objective” verification process.
Safe polls are not explicitly sanctioned by current state law, and this bill would change that, but it would also introduce new restrictions on its use compared to what voters experienced in the 2020 cycle.
Unless there is a health emergency, drop-down boxes can only be located in early voting locations and are accessible only when those locations are open. This means that voters could not use them during the three days prior to the election or on election day – the period when returning an absentee ballot by mail is more risky, as it must arrive by 7 pm on election day to tell.
Another provision would prohibit portable voting facilities, such as the mobile polling buses that Fulton County used in the last cycle, except in emergencies that require the closing of a polling station. In addition, groups of third parties would be prevented from sending absentee voting requests to any voter who has already requested, received or voted for a ballot by mail. This subject them to sanctions by the State Electoral Board.
The council would also have its own reformulation and the General Assembly would gain new power in the elections.
The Secretary of State would become a non-voting member of the council and would no longer chair. Instead, the Republican-controlled General Assembly would elect a seat by majority vote. Since the legislature already appoints two council members under this bill, they would appoint three of the five voting members to the council that oversees the elections and reports possible violations of the electoral law to the attorney general or district attorney. relevant.
Among the council’s new officials is the ability to suspend county electoral superintendents and appoint temporary substitutes. But the council’s power to enact emergency rules would be reduced because the House and Senate Judiciary Committees would have the power to suspend the rules established because of public health emergencies, such as the one that sanctions suspended boxes in the 2020 cycle.
Two provisions of the bill would add new burdens to county electoral divisions.
Although counties could start processing absentee ballots weeks ahead of time, on election night workers would no longer have the ability to interrupt vote counting until they are finished, excluding the few categories of ballots that can be accepted until Friday. after the election.
The bill also changes when counties must complete certification, extending the term by four days – a change that will have the greatest impact on large metropolitan counties that typically certify in or near the current term.