A new wide-ranging measure from Republican state lawmakers with changes to Georgia’s election system abruptly appeared Wednesday just before a scheduled committee hearing, sparking backlash from Democrats and voting-rights advocates about transparency.
The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, passed out of the Senate last week as a two-page bill focused on restricting how many applications for mail-in ballots outside groups could send to Georgia voters ahead of elections.
by | Capitol Beat News Service
But it arrived in the House Special Committee on Election Integrity Wednesday as a sweeping 93-page amended bill encompassing dozens of proposals contained in several other Republican-backed bills.
- Read the amended bill here.
Democrats on the committee cried foul over the speed and sparse advance notice of the bill, as did some voting-rights advocates who spoke up to denounce what they view as closed-door crafting of legislation that would bring major changes to how, when and where Georgians can vote.
“I’m just trying to understand the process here of how we’re doing things,” said Rep. Rhonda Burnough, D-Riverdale. “Are we just taking bills piece-by-piece and just putting them in when we want to? … Something’s not right.”
Burns’ newly transformed bill contains proposals from several other omnibus measures in the current legislative session, including proposals allowing state elections officials to take control of poor-performing county election boards, requiring absentee-ballot drop boxes to be located inside early-voting polling places and blocking mail-in ballot applications from being processed within 11 days of an election.
The bill also contains a contentious proposal allowing an unlimited number of challenges to voter qualifications ahead of elections, potentially freeing up the sort of large-scale moves to formally dispute voter registrations seen before Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs in January.
“Right now, in this piece of legislation, we’re legitimizing falsehoods that continue to disenfranchise African Americans and people of color across this state,” said James Woodall, president of the NAACP’s Georgia chapter.
“This process has not been efficient. It does not improve voter confidence and, in fact, will lead to greater consequences for [Georgia voters].”
One of the other omnibus election measures absorbed by Burns’ bill comes from Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, who chairs the House committee that held Wednesday’s hearing. His 66-page measure has faced two days of hearings in the Senate Ethics Committee this week and is expected to undergo more changes to be reviewed publicly on Thursday.
Speaking at Wednesday’s hearing, Fleming stressed no votes would be taken on Burns’ bill and that more testimony would be taken on Thursday.
Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, who chairs the House Higher Education Committee, argued in favor of the short notice for the bill, saying it aimed to serve as an introductory hearing to the proposals without any official action being taken.
“At some point, one has to put a bill out and have hearings,” Martin said.
Also included in Burns’ bill are proposals from another omnibus election measure from Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton, that is expected to scrap a controversial repeal of no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia but may soon incorporate proposals from other bills as it continues moving through the legislature.
Both Dugan’s and Fleming’s omnibus measures also propose requiring Georgians to provide a driver’s license or state ID card number in order to request an absentee ballot, a change supporters say would eliminate Georgia’s process for verifying voter signatures on mail-in ballot envelopes that former President Donald Trump and his allies bashed in the Nov. 3 general election.
That proposed change and many others still alive in the session have drawn a sharp outcry from opponents who argue they aim to hinder access to Georgia voters of color and to halt Democratic momentum following wins in the 2020 presidential election and recent Senate runoffs. — from Capitol Beat News Service
Let’s be reasonable. This is no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2018 gubernatorial election (sorry Democrats), nor the 2020 presidential election (sorry Republicans).
The bills being passed by our less-than-august legislators are merely pandering to the Trump base who live in a state of eternal victimization and anger. The new rules will not deter a motivated voter, and they are totally unnecessary except to give the Lilliputian legislators another occasion to show how willing they are to kiss the feet of their orange messiah.
The Democrats are little better. They know that these minor adjustments will change few election results, but they never miss an opportunity to be discriminated against and gain victimized status.
We need a new party of career victims who can have conventions of weeping on each others’ shoulders! The opposition could be the Rational party that looks for compromises so everyone wins something. I’ll be looking for this sanity just after I see pigs fly.
Can’t say it much better than that.
Firstly, how can anyone exist in today’s world without a cell phone and some form of govt ID? It’s needed for a laundry list of life’s necessities. So I would offer that the actual, real-life number of folks without some form of acceptable govt ID is statistically insignificant.
Secondly, I wonder if James Woodall of the NAACP and the vast majority of democrats like him, understand that their complaint is effectively stating that “African Americans and people of color” are too stupid and incompetent to obtain a free GA ID, or a Drivers License? He strikes me as a potential “Poster Child” for the “soft bigotry of low expectations”. He is asserting that AA&POC all need things like lower test scores and govt assistance because they are so significantly handicapped, have zero control over their own lives and are wholly incapable of rational decision making that they simply can not be left to their own wits to figure out how to exist in the world.
I think he’s full of bull-butter and is just a regular ol’ grifter. If we are ever to unify, we MUST stop this nonsense of treating AA&POC as “idiot children” who require special treatment and accommodation.
From what I see, this bill is a liability for Kemp as Stacey Abrams will certainly “leverage” this in her run for Governor (assuming she runs).
I believe Kemp is done in politics. I do not see how Stacy Abrams could never win.
I can not never know what Mr. Haddix is not agreeing with in his multiple negative post.
Kemp mishandled the 2020 election. He refused to call a special session of the legislature over the corrupt 2020.
Stacy Abrams supported all the corruption that took place.
What election corruption in 2020? That is a fantasy concocted by the 45th president. There is no evidence of any widespread malfeasance in Georgia’s 2020 election. Certainly no court has even entertained such poppycock. Please have the intestinal fortitude not to perpetuate that lie. Surely, you have enough self-respect to admit that the orange emperor has no clothes.
No, Don – Kemp did not mishandle the 2020 elections. The only thing he mishandled was not telling Trump, straight out, to go pound sand.
Complaints from partisans aside (the NAACP probably being the least interesting interlocutor in this issue), this bill is stupid. It does nothing to address election fraud in terms of both the real and imagined issues that people are upset about. It does enact several capricious and arbitrary legislations which – God help me for disagreeing with hysterical Democrats – only injures the ability of voters to participate in the electoral process.
We need to secure our elections now and in a way that no party can say with any credibility that they were not free and fair in the future (something both parties have done in the past 4 years).