With just days to go before the term ends, Republican lawmakers in both chambers of the Georgia General Assembly passed a nearly 100-page omnibus law on Thursday that would make sweeping changes to the electoral law, affecting voters, local election administrators and the United States. board that supervises the elections.
The bill, SB 202, first approved a party line vote in the House and then the Senate. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp made a statement immediately after the vote in the Senate saying he intended to sign it on Thursday night.
Marc Elias, the attorney leading charge on behalf of the Democrats to expand options during the pandemic, has already pledged “an immediate lawsuit” if Kemp signs the bill into law.
Democrats and Voting Rights Advocates overturned the bill as a tactic and legislation to suppress voters “seizure of power” in response to former President Donald Trump and GOP allies for months eliciting false conspiracy theories about a stolen, fraud-filled election. But Republicans believe the bill increases accessibility and aims to streamline elections, provide uniformity and address a lack of confidence in the elections in Georgia “on all sides of the political spectrum,” a notion Democrats share. dispute.
The bill would expand early ballots for primary and general elections, but not run-offs, and so Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock secured their Senate seats – and the majority of Democrats – in January, driving a decades-long line of losing Democrats. was broken. in statewide elections.
For primaries and general elections, provinces should vote in advance on both Saturdays and have the option to do so on the two Sundays falling in the three-week period. Under current law, only one Saturday early voting is required. Another omnibus election bill pending final ballots, HB 531, originally banned early voting on Sunday, but it was amended after fierce downturn from Democrats and the faith community who called it a direct attack on black voters participating in ‘Souls to the Polls ‘events after the Sunday service.
However, this bill would shorten the period between election and second round from nine weeks to four weeks, and while the provinces could start voting early “ as soon as possible ”, the bill requires it to be offered Monday through Friday only, the week before the election – a much shorter term that does not include weekend days. Complicating this further is the possibility that the week coincides with Thanksgiving, when many are traveling. This bill also prohibits early voting on public holidays.
A provision of the bill would make it a crime for anyone who is not an election officer to give food or drink to a voter standing in line to vote, a practice known as “line heating,” with the exception of self-serve water stations. In the June 2020 primaries, voters in Georgia’s largest metroprovinces – democratic strongholds with large minorities – waited up to eight hours in line.
Another provision bans out-of-district voting until 5 p.m., and voters arriving after that point must sign an affidavit stating that they cannot get to their assigned district in time to vote. Currently, voters who come to the wrong district can vote a preliminary vote and their votes count for races they were eligible to vote for, such as statewide races.
The bill would also eliminate the signature matching process to verify ballots and instead require voters to provide their driver’s license or state identification number, or a photocopy of another accepted identification if the voter does not have one.
While a signatures check in Georgia’s third largest province found no fraudulent ballots, this verification process was the source of much of the former president’s post-election anger. Top Republicans, like the Governor, endorsed the transition from this “subjective” verification process to an “objective” one.
Safe ballots are not explicitly sanctioned under current state law, and this bill would change that, but it would also introduce new restrictions on their use compared to what voters have experienced in the 2020 cycle.
Unless there is an emergency, dropboxes can only be in pre-voting locations and only accessible when those locations are open. This means that voters could not use them during the three days prior to an election or on election day – the period when a ballot paper must be returned by mail in case of absence is the most risky as it must arrive at 7:00 p.m. on election day to to count.
Another provision would ban portable polling stations, such as the mobile polling boxes Fulton County used the last cycle, except in emergencies where a polling station must be closed. In addition, third party groups may not send requests for absenteeism to voters who have already requested, received or voted a ballot by post. As a result, they are subject to sanctions from the state election council.
The administration would also get its own overhaul and the General Assembly would be given new power over elections.
The Secretary of State would become a non-voting member of the board and no longer be chairman. Instead, the Republican-controlled General Assembly would elect a chairman by majority vote. Since the legislature already appoints two board members, under this bill they would appoint three of the five voting members to the board that oversees elections and refer potential violations of the electoral law to the attorney general or the relevant prosecutor.
One of the council’s new authorities is the ability to suspend district election superintendents and appoint temporary replacements. But the administration’s power to enact emergency rules would be curtailed because the House and Senate judicial committees would have the power to suspend rules put in place due to public health emergencies, such as the sanction. of dropboxes in the 2020 cycle.
Two provisions of the bill would create new burdens for the county electoral divisions.
While counties are allowed to start processing ballots in absence weeks in advance, election night workers would no longer have the option to stop counting ballots until they are ready, with the exception of the few categories of ballots that can be accepted up to the Friday after the election.
The bill also changes when counties must complete certification, pushing the deadline by four days – a change that will most affect the major metropolitan cities that typically certify at or near the current deadline.