The Daily Populous Wednesday May 12nd, 2021 morning edition
Authored by independent.co.uk and submitted by M00n

Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday rejected an amendment to the For The People Act that would ban states from restricting volunteers from handing out food or water to people standing in line to vote.

The amendment was proposed by Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia – where Republicans have recently passed a law that criminalises giving out food and water to voters at the polls – as part of his Voter Access to Water Act.

Republicans have claimed that allowing people to hand out food and water would encourage electioneering at the polls, which is already illegal.

Mr Ossoff said the Senate has been “somewhat plagued by a presumption of partisan bad faith” and asked senators to drop the “reflexive tendency to perceive the worst” from Democratic proposals supporting voting rights.

“It is already against the law … to campaign or engage in political advocacy or electioneering, wear campaign merchandise, have conversations with voters about who they’re going to vote for” while in line to vote, he said. “That’s already a crime.”

The committee is debating amendments for the For The People Act, sweeping voting rights and campaign finance reform legislation that has been supposed by House Democrats and the White House. It faces stiff opposition from an evenly divided Senate.

In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp recently signed into law an elections bill that, among other measures, makes it a misdemeanor to give out food or water within 150 feet of a polling place or within 25 feet of a person standing in line to vote. Voting rights advocates have panned the law as an attempt to suppress votes in areas more likely to endure longer lines on Election Day.

Democrats have sought to pass the For The People Act as an antidote to ballot restrictions and other measures supported by Republicans across the US in the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral defeat.

The measure proposes automatic voter registration, at least 15 consecutive days of early voting for federal elections, and mail-in voting and drop boxes for absentee ballots, among a host of other proposals wrapped into the bill.

It would also make it more difficult to purge voters from voter rolls, restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people, create independent redistricting commissions that redraw congressional districts in an effort to combat partisan-driven gerrymandering, and expose “dark money” groups and super PAC money, as well as funding sources behind political ads on Facebook and Twitter, among other measures aimed at campaign finance reform and transparency.

mrkramer1990 on May 11st, 2021 at 20:03 UTC »

Why are they having so few polling places that there are long enough lines for this to even be an issue?

Disastrous-Parking21 on May 11st, 2021 at 19:24 UTC »

It should not take hours to vote. The very fact that people in certain areas have to wait for hours while people in other areas can be in and out in just a few minutes is voter suppression in itself.

The_Lonely_Satirist on May 11st, 2021 at 18:59 UTC »

Stop taking attention away from the other parts of the bill that are even more troubling.

In Georgia this bill creates an election board appointed by a Republican legislative majority to oversee all counties in future elections.

The state board, which now will be fully controlled by the Republican legislative majority, is unilaterally empowered to take over (among other things) the process of disqualifying ballots across the state. Given that Georgia Republicans have helped promote false allegations of voter fraud, it’s easy to see why handing them so much power over local election authorities is so worrying.

This board now also has the unchecked power to suspend county election officials, and removes the secretary of state as a voting member from said board. Raffensperger proved to be a difficult obstacle for Trump.

From 2012 to 2018, Georgia shuttered more than 214 voting precincts around the state, Those changes, confused many voters, who upon showing up to the wrong precinct had to vote with provisional ballots.

This provision removes even that remedy for voters who arrive at the wrong precinct before 5 p.m., requiring them to instead travel to the correct precinct or risk being disenfranchised.

Casting a provisional ballot after showing up at the wrong precinct was by far the most common reason for voting provisionally in the 2020 election in Georgia

Of the 11,120 provisional ballots in the 2020 presidential election, Biden won 64 percent and Trump took 34 percent.

Among the major changes, the law clearly reduces the time for absentee voting: The state used to allow voters to request an absentee ballot up to 180 days before an election; the new law cuts that to 78 days and no later than 11 days before an election. It prohibits officials from sending absentee ballot applications to voters unless the voter specifically requested one.

the new law gives specific requirements on early voting times, while the old law gave county elections officials more leeway to make these decisions. In fact, while the law now mandates two Saturdays instead of one, it also says counties and municipalities can’t hold early voting on any days besides those outlined in the law.

You've probably heard Republican figureheads use the phrase "we're actually making it EASIER to vote, we've expanded early voting". Which is disingenuous becuase:

Early voting is expanded in smaller (rural republican) counties, but not in larger (democrat) ones:

The provision requires counties to hold early voting during weekday working hours — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.. And sometimes, depending on the county, may be extended a couple hours. Previously, the law called only for early voting during “normal business hours” and left it up to counties to determine those hours.

The provision also adds a second required Saturday of early voting, which will increase access to early voting in most of the state’s rural counties, where election administrators have often been short-staffed and have offered fewer hours of early voting. Most larger counties in the state already offered multiple weekend days of early voting. So they've made it easier for republicans to vote, not democrats, while it also may become more difficult for some democrats to vote in red counties;

The law doesn’t require the availability of early voting on Sundays, and counties can choose whether to open for early voting on up to two Sundays before an election. Counties that choose not to open on Sundays would be limiting ballot access for parishioners at Black churches that have often organized parishioners to vote after Sunday services.

The bill also allows any individual Georgian citizen to file an unlimited number of challenges to the eligibility of particular voters, effectively increasing the number of opportunities for newly centralized election authorities to exercise their powers to disqualify Democrats

The bill Imposes new limitations on ballot drop boxes that effectively ban their widespread deployment outside of a governor-declared emergency. This is another big one, effectively limiting the number of ways people can vote, and along with the closing down of polling places in blue regions, it's painfully obvious what the goal is here.

It creates a fraud hotline that allows people to anonymously complain about allegedly fraudulent behavior at the polls, and with an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage this election hotline.

It’s also now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.

And yes, criminalizing giving out water and snacks is bad

in 2020, many voters had to wait in hours-long lines to vote, especially in heavily Black areas. This is a real and long-running problem: One study (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/study-heavily-minority-precincts-endured-longer-wait-times-to-cast-ballots-in-2018/2019/11/04/f8433e1c-fef7-11e9-8501-2a7123a38c58_story.html) of the 2018 elections found that, nationwide, voters in low-income and minority communities had to wait in longer lines than voters in wealthier and whiter areas. The longest lines in the country, according the study, were in Fulton County.

As Georgia’s population has grown in the past few years, particularly in Democratic-leaning areas, the Republicans who control state elections have cut the number of polling places statewide by 10 percent. And now it’s illegal for people to bring food and water to help the voters who wait in these artificially long lines.

And there's also the adding of more ID requirements, particularly for mail in voting. Hmm, I wonder who that's targeting? Look, I don't have a direct problem with voter ID itself, I have a problem with it's lack of ease of access, and having to navigate through the obstacles required to obtain it, particularly for the poor. All voter ID should be free and should exist concurrently with automatic voter registration for all American citizens. It should be easily obtainable from a variety of institutions. Not just through long lines at the DMV. You should be able to receive Voter ID through applying for things like SNAP benefits, Medicaid/Medicare, and other assistance programs. Just like they're used to help people register to vote in the first place. Hell, we should be sending all those that are automatically registered a temporary voter ID to use in the next election cycle.

And a fair share of Republicans are justifying these voting restrictions with the idea that they're "preventing democrats from cheating", that these laws are to protect "election integrity", when we all know that this is just a way for Republicans to find an objectively illegitimate reason, and to use duplicitous terms like "election integrity" to make it harder for democrats to vote, while simultaneously pandering to a base of conspiratorial fucking nutjobs. They're exploiting the baseless conspiracy theories and lies purported by Trump, and more specifically the idiots who believe those lies, to justify passing sweeping voting restrictions while they garner support and blind admiration from conservatives.

This is also about Republicans losing a precious southern state. They're going to do everything within their power to prevent this blue trend from continuing. Is saying that these laws are Jim Crow 2.0 a bit of an hyperbole? Sure... But Georgia is among many southern states that have counties with some of the largest and often majority black populations. However, Georgia was the only one of these type of states to turn blue. So it's undoubtedly clear who these laws are targeted against. With this law in place, it's looking significantly more likely that Georgia will turn back red in the next election. Meaning Republicans will get what they wanted out of this oppressive "prevent democrats from cheating voting" bill.