Harmfully Partisan
Much has been written and said about the new Georgia voting law, especially regarding additional ID requirements for mail-in ballots. Many of those who comment choose to ignore the more objectionable parts of this Rethuglican law, its racist goal clearly being to suppress the minority vote.
Once the voter jumps through all the requisite ID hoops, this law still makes it harder to actually cast a vote. In November 2020, there were 94 total drop boxes in the four most heavily populated, most diverse counties in Georgia. Under the new law, that number will be reduced to a mere 23 and the hours of accessibility will also be reduced. Fulton County (Atlanta) is 51 percent African-American and Hispanic, Gwinnett County 48 percent, Cobb County 40 percent, and DeKalb County 62 percent. How does removing three-quarters of the drop boxes in these counties translate to “election integrity”?
That is not even the most egregious part of the law. This legislation would remove the Secretary of State from control of the State Election Board, to be replaced with a “non–partisan” chairperson appointed by a majority of the Georgia House and Senate. Since the GOP has controlled both branches since 2005, it’s highly unlikely there will be a non-partisan appointee in the foreseeable future.This is nothing more than a power grab in response to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s unwillingness to bow to Donald Trump’s demand to “find 11,780 votes” in the 2020 presidential election. (Trump lost Georgia by 11,779.) Republicans are now free to do as Trump had suggested, which is to “recalculate” every time Republicans lose. “Enough” with the tired old trope of the GOP being the party of Abraham Lincoln. This has not been true since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.In the 1964 presidential election, GOP candidate Barry Goldwater carried only six states against Lyndon B. Johnson. Five were states of the old Confederacy: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina, plus his home state of Arizona. The Rethuglicans have been the party of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee ever since.
For the record: The laws under which previous Georgia elections had been held (with no documented evidence of voter fraud, whatsoever) were written by Republicans! They had no problems with these laws until President Biden carried the state in 2020 and Democrats won two U.S. Senate runoffs in January 2021. It then became necessary to circle the wagons and fight off an angry mob of “woke” Americans trying to exercise their franchise. Some are calling this new law Jim Crow 2.0, but that’s giving the GOP too much credit. It’s more like Vladimir (he never loses) Putin 2.0. To paraphrase an old saying … It’s not only who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.