Wednesday, December 09, 2020

Georgia Republicans want less voting by the wrong citizens

The election, in all three counts, was more 99.965% accurate.



No quantity of recounts will shift the 2020 results in Georgia. Trump lost; Biden won.

So Republican legislators are already working to make sure such a thing never happens again. 

Georgia Republicans on Tuesday outlined a plan to restrict mail voting and roll back the election laws that contributed to the state's record-high turnout in the presidential election — unwinding rules the party itself put in place.

The framework for legislation — which would eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, add a voter ID requirement to mail ballots for voters with an eligible excuse and eliminate drop boxes — appears designed to respond to President Donald Trump's repeated and false claims that mail voting is rife with fraud.

... Voting rights experts have long argued that mail voting is already secure, and that these types of restrictions suppress voters, particularly Black and brown Americans who already face disproportionate hurdles.

... Georgia Republicans created the state's no-excuse absentee voting system in 2005, under Gov. Sonny Perdue, who now serves at Trump's secretary of agriculture.

And their efforts to make voting harder will begin with the January 5 Senate run off elections. The New York Times reports: 

Election officials in Cobb County, Georgia, the state’s third most populous county, are planning to open fewer than half the early voting locations for the Senate runoff elections in January. It is one of the only counties in the state to make such a drastic reduction in voting access while the pandemic surges.
In the 2020 election, the county had 11 early voting locations. For the January runoffs, the county is planning to have only five....

County officials claim holiday related staffing shortages -- but given the state's history of voter suppression, it's hard not to suspect partisan motives.

You can help Georgia voters make a plan to turn out despite whatever obstacles Republicans throw up by joining the UniteHERE phone bank.

1 comment:

Bonnie said...

Best wishes in the efforts for our citizens of this area. It could spread like wildfire to my state that is run with an idiot trying to sue other states on their voting.