Following unexpected Democratic victories in Georgia in November and January, Republicans in the state Senate voted Monday to significantly curtail the right to vote.
On Monday afternoon, the legislators approved a bill repealing no-excuse absentee voting, which 1.3 million voters used to cast ballots by mail in 2020, including 450,000 Republicans. They were also set to consider a bill on Monday evening ending automatic voter registration, which 5 million of the state’s 7.6 million voters used to register since it was implemented in 2016.
The Senate bills follow the passage of a sweeping House bill last week that cuts weekend voting days—including on Sundays, when Black churches hold “Souls to the Polls” get-out-the-vote drives—restricts the use of mail ballot drop boxes, prevents counties from accepting grants from nonprofits to improve their elections, adds new voter ID requirements for mail ballots, gives election official less time to send out mail ballots and voters less time to return them, and even makes it a crime to distribute food and water to voters waiting in line.
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Georgia already had 11-hour lines to vote during the presidential election, and voters of color waited eight times as long as whites to vote during the June 2020 presidential primary.
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Georgia Republicans wrote every aspect of the state’s voting laws and are only changing them after Democrats carried the state in November and won two US Senate races in January.
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Republicans promoted mail-in voting for years—writing the law that created no-excuse absentee voting in 2005—but are trying to repeal it after Joe Biden won mail voters 65 percent to 34 percent. The white share of mail voters fell from 67 percent in 2016 to 54 percent in 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, while Black share of mail voters rose from 23 percent in 2016 to 31 percent in 2020. The bill passed by Senate Republicans would limit mail voting to people who are out of town, disabled, or over 65—a demographic that is much whiter and more Republican than the state as a whole.
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Similarly, automatic registration is under fire after more than 1 million new voters were added to the rolls between 2016 and 2020—two-thirds of them voters of color, a demographic that voted 70 percent for Biden.
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Republicans have introduced 253 bills in 43 states in the first two months of this year to make it harder to vote.
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The House and Senate bills must be reconciled before being sent to Kemp, who’s been mum on whether he’ll sign them.
Mother Jones
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