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    Georgia and Voting Rights: Deep Distrust Over a Plan to Close Polling Places

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    As legislation to expand voting rights was blocked in Washington, local residents debate a plan from officials in Lincoln County, Ga., who say they want to streamline and modernize their system.LINCOLN COUNTY, Ga. — The showdown over voting rights in the U.S. Senate may be over for now. But the issue is still smoldering in a stretch of Northeast Georgia countryside where local officials recently introduced a plan to close seven polling sites and consolidate them into one.The proposal in Lincoln County has attracted the attention and ire of major voting rights groups and suspicion among some Black residents who say the effort is just the latest example of voter suppression in a state where Republicans recently passed a restrictive new law. Hundreds of upset residents have filed protest petitions that could cause local officials to scale it back.But local officials say the current polling spots are in need of modernization — and that in a county where about two-thirds of the 7,700 residents are white, the plan is simply an effort to make it easier to manage elections. The remaining site would be located close to the polling place that currently serves the county’s one majority-Black precinct.“They seem to think that I’m trying to stop Black people from voting,” said the elections director, an African American woman named Lilvender Bolton. She would administer the plan that was under consideration last week by a mostly Republican-appointed board of two Black members and three white ones.In Georgia, a state where razor-thin voting margins have helped swing the White House and control of the Senate, any effort to change the process of voting has become fiercely contested. And after recent efforts by Republicans in Georgia and around the country to restrict voting, suspicions are high.Lilvender Bolton, who leads the Board of Elections, supports a plan to consolidate voting into one location.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesFor decades, a proposal like Lincoln County’s would have been subject to review from the Department of Justice to determine whether it was discriminatory, a step mandated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act and often referred to as “preclearance.” But this system was effectively gutted by a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, and has not returned since, despite efforts to revive it like last week’s Senate debate.David J. Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the failure to reinstitute preclearance this year was a missed opportunity.Mr. Becker was careful to note that he could not tell whether Lincoln County’s consolidation plan was politically motivated or well-intentioned. But with preclearance, he said, residents of areas like Lincoln County would at least have had a sense that a third party had taken a hard look at whether a proposed change to voting in their community would make it harder for minority groups to vote.“Preclearance was a stamp of approval that elections officials could use to tamp down exactly this kind of divisive rhetoric that’s going around,” he said.In 2019, the Leadership Conference Education Fund, a civil rights nonprofit based in Washington, issued a report analyzing the areas formerly subject to federal review and found a loss of 1,173 polling places between the 2014 and the 2018 midterm elections.Fully understanding the “potentially discriminatory impact of these closures,” the report’s authors wrote, would require “precisely the kind” of analysis “that the DOJ conducted under preclearance.”Even voting rights groups acknowledge that there are sometimes legitimate reasons for closing polling places: Populations shift, and sometimes the way people cast their vote changes, too. More voters may begin choosing to vote by mail or at early voting locations rather than their precinct.Officials want all voting to take place in Lincolnton, the county seat.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn Lincoln County, Ms. Bolton, the county elections director, argues that the change would make it easier for her to manage Election Day. Her tiny staff is stressed, she said, by the responsibility of setting up and breaking down the complicated electronic voting machines in seven locations spread around the county’s 257 square miles.The failure of the voting overhaul effort in Washington comes after Republican state lawmakers, in the wake of former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020, have moved to overhaul election systems in dozens of states, including Georgia, often in the name of protecting against dubious allegations of voter fraud promulgated by Mr. Trump and his allies.The Georgia legislature has also handed control of some or all appointments to local election boards in six counties to conservative judges or Republican-controlled county commissions.Given these recent developments, and the long history of racist disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South, some Lincoln County voters say they would be foolish not to suspect that they are being targeted.“How could you not see it as a pattern?” said Charlie Murray, 68, a Black resident who votes at a nearby church far from the county seat.“They’re making it harder for people to vote,” said another Black resident, Franklin Sherman, 29, a truck driver who usually votes in the same spot.Franklin Sherman, 29, opposes consolidating the precincts: “They’re making it harder for people to vote.”Nicole Craine for The New York TimesLincoln County was among the six Georgia counties in which the rules for selecting members of the local elections board were recently changed by the state legislature.County officials originally asked legislators for the change because they wanted to be able to stagger the members’ terms, said Walker T. Norman, the longtime chair of the county commission and a Republican.Another change — ending the tradition of letting the Democratic and Republican Parties each choose one board member — was prompted by a State Supreme Court ruling, which has been interpreted to hold that private entities cannot appoint members to government bodies, he said.The legislation mandating the changes was sponsored by State Senator Lee Anderson, a Republican who co-sponsored last year’s restrictive Georgia voting bill. He also publicly supported a baseless and unsuccessful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia and three other states. In a recent interview, Mr. Anderson said that in making the changes to the local elections board, he was simply responding to the wishes of Lincoln County officials.Mr. Norman is something of a legend in the county: The community gym proposed as the sole new voting site bears his name — “I got a road named after me too,” he said — and two years ago he changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican because he said it had become too hard to get elected as a Democrat. In an interview, he dismissed the idea that Black voters would be discriminated against by a consolidation. He noted that in all but one precinct, white voters outnumber Black ones.“You can see that they’re not for all the people,” Charlie Murray, 68, said of Lincoln County officials.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“So if we’re suppressing anybody, I’m afraid we’re suppressing the white vote,” he said. “But that’s not our intent, to suppress any vote.”Mr. Norman said that in recent elections, a majority of participants have voted early at a centralized location in Lincolnton. He also described a litany of problems with the current system: Three polling places are within about two and a half miles of one another. Some of the facilities are antiquated. Consolidation, he said, will require less equipment. “We don’t have to use but about half of the voting machines,” he said.But opponents, both Black and white, expressed more concern for the convenience of voters than for that of the voting officials and poll workers.Racy Smith, 56, the owner of a Lincolnton antique and curio shop, said it seemed “ridiculous” to close rural polling places in a county with limited public transportation. “My 86-year-old mom can still drive,” said Mr. Smith, who is white, “but there are so many that aren’t that active who live out in the county.”The Rev. Denise Freeman, a former member of the school board and an activist leading the fight against the consolidation, expressed skepticism about the board’s true motivation. “I think it’s the good ol’ boys flexing their muscle for more power and more control,” she said.On Thursday, Ms. Freeman gave a tour of some of the more remote areas of the county, a few miles from the J. Strom Thurmond reservoir, named for the Republican senator who was known as a segregationist but ended up voting to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.Ms. Freeman talked about her role in the other major racially charged issue that rocked the county in recent decades: an allegation, in the early 1990s, that Black children had been told to sit in the back of a school bus by a driver.The Rev. Denise Freeman, a local activist, outside the proposed site for the new polling station, a gymnasium named after the longtime chair of the county commission. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBlack parents discussed keeping their children out of school. Ms. Freeman spoke up about this issue and other perceived injustices, earning her share of enemies.Eventually, she said, an outside group came in to broker a sort of peace: the Department of Justice.Three decades later, the residents of Lincoln County will most likely need to sort out their disagreement over polling places on their own. On Tuesday, Ms. Bolton’s office was in the process of verifying hundreds of protest petitions from voters in two precincts. Under Georgia law, those two polling places will have to stay open if the petitioners amount to 20 percent or more of the total electors in each precinct.But Jim Allen, a board member, does not believe that the plan is dead. Some form of consolidation, he said, was likely to be considered eventually.Michael Wines More

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      Court Approves Special Grand Jury in Trump Election Inquiry

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      A district attorney in Georgia is investigating possible election interference by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies.A Georgia district attorney’s request to convene a special grand jury was approved Monday in the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.Fani T. Willis, an Atlanta prosecutor, requested the grand jury last week after crucial witnesses identified by investigators refused to cooperate voluntarily. Assembling a grand jury — which could issue subpoenas — is the next step in an inquiry that legal experts see as potentially threatening for the former president.“The special purpose grand jury shall be authorized to investigate any and all facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to alleged violations of the laws of the State of Georgia,” stated the approval order, signed by Christopher S. Brasher, the chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court.The grand jury would start its work on May 2 and continue “for a period not to exceed 12 months,” the order said.Legal experts have been watching the Georgia case for months, and say that the former president’s criminal exposure could include charges of racketeering or conspiracy. It is the only known criminal case that focuses directly on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.Politically, the case takes place in a state that played a pivotal role in President Biden’s path to the White House. Mr. Biden became the first Democrat since 1992 to win Georgia’s electoral votes in 2020. The actions of Mr. Trump and his allies during the two-month period that followed Mr. Biden’s victory has been the focus of Ms. Willis’s criminal investigation.After Mr. Trump’s election loss — and before Georgia held two Senate elections in January — Mr. Trump began to publicly dispute the results of the election in states he lost, including Georgia. On Jan. 2, he called Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, and asked him to “find 11,780 votes” — the margin by which Mr. Trump lost the state.The call kicked off a firestorm that continues to have political and legal ramifications. Mr. Trump, who remains the most influential figure in the Republican Party and is a likely candidate for president in 2024, has previously stated that his call with Mr. Raffensperger was “perfect.”The former president has stared down legal troubles before, including investigations into his businesses and finances, and is the only president to have been impeached twice. He has previously dismissed other investigations as politically motivated. Ms. Willis, the Atlanta prosecutor, is a DemocratThe Georgia case is one of several criminal, civil and congressional investigations focused on Mr. Trump. A Democrat-led Congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol recently won a Supreme Court victory, which will allow it to obtain White House records.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Texas Man Charged With Threatening to Kill Georgia Election Officials

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      A man accused of using Craigslist to call for the assassination of election officials is the first to be charged by the Justice Department’s task force on election threats.WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Friday charged a Texas man with publicly calling for the assassination of Georgia’s election officials on the day before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The case is the first brought by the department’s Election Threats Task Force, an agency created last summer to address threats against elections and election workers. Federal prosecutors accused the man, Chad Christopher Stark, 54, of Leander, Texas, of calling for “Georgia Patriots” to “put a bullet” in a Georgia election official the indictment refers to as Official A.Mr. Stark, according to the three-page indictment, made the threat in a post on Craigslist, the online message board, while then-President Donald J. Trump and his allies were putting public pressure on Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who certified Mr. Trump’s defeat in Georgia to Joseph R. Biden Jr.“Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors,” Mr. Stark wrote, according to the indictment. “It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment right it’s time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A]. Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges.”Mr. Stark was charged with one count of communicating interstate threats.The Craigslist posting came at a moment of intense political pressure against election officials in battleground states. Mr. Trump had phoned Mr. Raffensperger on Jan. 2 last year and demanded that he “find” nearly 12,000 votes to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia. The posting was published on Jan. 5, a day before a Trump-inspired crowd attacked the United States Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying Mr. Biden as the next president.On Thursday, a district attorney in Atlanta asked a judge to convene a special grand jury to help a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. If the investigation proceeds, legal experts say that the former president’s potential criminal exposure could include charges of racketeering or conspiracy to commit election fraud.Mr. Raffensperger on Friday did not confirm if he was among the election officials targeted.“I strongly condemn threats against election workers and those who volunteer in elections,” he said in a statement. “These are the people who make our democracy work.”Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said on Friday that the task force is reviewing over 850 reports of threats to election officials and has opened dozens of criminal investigations.During the 2020 election cycle and in its immediate aftermath, election workers “came under unprecedented verbal assault for doing nothing more than their jobs,” Mr. Polite told reporters Friday. “As the attorney general and deputy attorney general have both emphasized previously: We will not tolerate the intimidation of those who safeguard our electoral system.”The task force, created last June by the deputy attorney general, Lisa O. Monaco, developed a system to log and track all reported threats to election workers and F.B.I. agents, and federal prosecutors were trained to take in, assess and investigate the allegations. Mr. Polite said the task force has prioritized finding ways to enhance security for state and local election workers.The Texas case represents the task force’s first indictment and arrest. Mr. Polite declined to elaborate on what Mr. Stark may have planned to do.“The communication here speaks for itself,” Mr. Polite said, referring to Mr. Stark’s Craigslist post, which offered $10,000 and called for “Patriots” to “exterminate these people.”In addition to the two Georgia election officials, Mr. Stark’s Craigslist post also threatened a third Georgia official.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 17The House investigation. More

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      Republicans Want New Tool in Elusive Search for Voter Fraud: Election Police

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      Republicans in three states have proposed strike forces against election crimes even though fraud cases remain minuscule.WASHINGTON — Reprising the rigged-election belief that has become a mantra among their supporters, Republican politicians in at least three states are proposing to establish police forces to hunt exclusively for voter fraud and other election crimes, a category of offenses that experts say is tiny at best.The plans are part of a new wave of initiatives that Republicans say are directed at voter fraud. They are being condemned by voting rights advocates and even some local election supervisors, who call them costly and unnecessary appeasement of the Republican base that will select primary-election winners for this November’s midterms and the 2024 presidential race.The next round of voting clashes comes after the apparent demise of Democratic voting rights legislation in Washington on Thursday. It is a reminder that while the Democratic agenda in Washington seems dead, Republican state-level efforts to make voting harder show no sign of slowing down.Supporters say the added enforcement will root out instances of fraud and assure the public that everything possible is being done to make sure that American elections are accurate and legitimate. Critics say the efforts can easily be abused and used as political cudgels or efforts to intimidate people from registering and voting. And Democrats say the main reason Republican voters have lost faith in the electoral system is because of the incessant Republican focus on almost entirely imagined fraud.The most concrete proposal is in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the State Legislature last week for $5.7 million to create a 52-person “election crimes and security” force in the secretary of state’s office. The plan, which Mr. DeSantis has been touting since the fall, would include 20 sworn police officers and field offices statewide.Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the Florida Legislature for $5.7 million to create a 52-person “election crimes and security” force in the secretary of state’s office.Chris O’Meara/Associated PressThat was followed on Thursday by a pledge by David Perdue, the former Georgia senator who is a Republican candidate for governor, to create his own force of election police “to make Georgia elections the safest and securest in the country.” Mr. Perdue, who lost his Senate seat in 2020, claimed that Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who is seeking re-election, weakened election standards and refused to investigate claims of fraud following President Biden’s narrow win in the state.And in Arizona, a vocal supporter of former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election, State Senator Wendy Rogers, has filed legislation to establish a $5 million “bureau of elections” in the governor’s office with the power to subpoena witnesses and impound election equipment.Ms. Rogers’s bill probably faces an uphill road in the Legislature, where Republicans are only narrowly in control and have been battered for their support of a widely ridiculed multimillion-dollar inquiry into 2020 election results. Prospects for the Florida and Georgia proposals are less clear.The proposals are the latest twist in a decades-long crusade by Republicans against election fraud that has grown rapidly since Mr. Trump’s election loss in 2020 and his false claim that victory was stolen from him.Mr. DeSantis took a tough line in November when he unveiled his proposal, saying that the new unit would chase crimes that local election official shrug at. “There’ll be people, if you see someone ballot harvesting, you know, what do you do? If you call into the election office, a lot of times they don’t do anything,” he said at an appearance in West Palm Beach.“I guarantee you this,” he added. “The first person that gets caught, no one is going to want to do it again after that.”None of the three states — and for that matter, none of the other 47 and the District of Columbia — reported any more than a minuscule number of election fraud cases after the 2020 races. Mr. DeSantis said after the 2020 vote that his was “the state that did it right and that other states should emulate.” The only notable hint of irregularity in Florida was the recent arrest on fraud charges of four men in a retirement complex north of Orlando. At least two of them appeared to be winter Floridians accused of casting ballots both there and in more frigid states to the north.Trump supporters gathered outside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in downtown Phoenix as ballots were counted in November 2020.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesBut Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Perdue say their strike forces are still needed to root out other election irregularities and to bolster their constituents’ sagging faith in the honesty of the vote. The same rationale has powered so-called audits of election results and clampdowns on election rules by Republican-run legislatures across the country.Sweeping election-law revisions enacted by Florida and Georgia legislators last spring sharply limit the use of popular drop boxes for submitting absentee ballots, require identification to obtain mail-in ballots, make it harder to conduct voter-registration drives, and restrict or ban interactions — such as handing out snacks or water — with voters waiting in line to cast ballots.Mr. Trump comfortably won Florida by about 370,000 votes in 2020, and his narrow losses in Arizona and Georgia were confirmed by expert audits, recounts and even the notorious Cyber Ninjas inquiry into the vote in Maricopa County.“We don’t need further investigations into elections that are freely and fairly conducted,” said Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director of the advocacy group All Voting Is Local. “We’ve established that again and again and again. This is more pablum to the people who believe in fraud and conspiracy theories and lies that the last election was stolen.”Neither the new laws nor election autopsies appear to have shaken the conviction of many Trump supporters that the election system is suspect. Some scholars say they see the police forces as the latest bid by politicians to scratch that itch.Bids to curb so-called fraud are becoming standard for Republican candidates who want to win over voters, Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview. “Whoever is the nominee in 2024, whether it’s Trump or anyone else, it will likely be part of their platform,” Mr. Burden said.The idea of an election police force is not new, even in the states where they are being proposed. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger already oversees 23 investigators whose purview includes election irregularities, and an assistant state attorney general exclusively prosecutes crimes in elections, the judiciary and local governments. The Arizona attorney general manages a relatively new “election integrity” investigative unit, and Florida election violations are prosecuted by both state and local authorities, as is true in most states. More

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      Atlanta D.A. Requests Special Grand Jury in Trump Election Inquiry

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      The prosecutor, Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, Ga., is investigating possible election interference by the former president and his allies.A district attorney in Atlanta on Thursday asked a judge to convene a special grand jury to help a criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.The inquiry is seen by legal experts as potentially perilous for the former president. The grand jury request from the district attorney in Fulton County, Fani T. Willis, had been expected after crucial witnesses refused to participate voluntarily. A grand jury could issue subpoenas compelling those witnesses to provide information.The distinction of a special grand jury is that it would focus exclusively on the Trump investigation, while regular grand juries handle many cases and cannot spend as much time on a single one. The Georgia case is one of two active criminal investigations known to involve the former president and his circle; the other is the examination of his financial dealings by the Manhattan district attorney.“The District Attorney’s Office has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the State of Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020, including the State’s election of the President of the United States, was subject to possible criminal disruptions,” Ms. Willis wrote in a letter to Christopher S. Brasher, the chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court; the letter was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Judge Brasher declined to comment.Ms. Willis added, “We have made efforts to interview multiple witnesses and gather evidence, and a significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”The inquiry is the only criminal case known to have been taken up by a prosecutor that focuses directly on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. It is set to play out in a state taking center stage in the nation’s battle over voting rights, and one where a heated Republican primary for governor is testing Mr. Trump’s strength as a kingmaker in the Republican Party.If the investigation proceeds, legal experts say that the former president’s potential criminal exposure could include charges of racketeering or conspiracy to commit election fraud.The inquiry centers on Mr. Trump’s actions in the two months between his election loss and Congress’s certification of the results, including a call he made to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to pressure him to “find 11,780 votes” — the margin by which Mr. Trump lost the state.Ms. Willis said that Mr. Raffensperger was among those who had refused to cooperate without a subpoena.“We already have cooperated,” Mr. Raffensperger said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday. “Any information that they’ve requested, we sent it to them. And if we’re compelled to come before a grand jury, obviously, we will follow the law and come before a grand jury and testify.”Representatives for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday, but the former president did release a statement characterizing his phone call with Mr. Raffensperger as “perfect.” He has cast other investigations, including one being conducted by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, as politically motivated. Fulton is the most populous county in Georgia and a Democratic stronghold, and Ms. Willis is a Democrat.The Georgia inquiry is one of several criminal, civil and congressional investigations focused on Mr. Trump. He and his allies have been sparring in court with the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee won a major victory on Wednesday when the Supreme Court refused a request from Mr. Trump to block the release of White House records, and on Thursday, the panel asked Ivanka Trump to cooperate in the inquiry.In addition to the criminal inquiry being conducted by the Manhattan district attorney, Ms. James is leading a civil fraud investigation into Mr. Trump’s business empire. She has issued subpoenas seeking interviews with two of his adult children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and her office previously interviewed a third, Eric Trump.In Atlanta, Ms. Willis said last year that she would consider racketeering charges, among others. An analysis released last year by the Brookings Institution that has been studied by Ms. Willis’s office concluded that Mr. Trump’s postelection conduct in Georgia had put him “at substantial risk of possible state charges,” including racketeering, election fraud solicitation, intentional interference with performance of election duties and conspiracy to commit election fraud.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More

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      Georgia prosecutor seeks special grand jury into Trump’s election interference

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      Georgia prosecutor seeks special grand jury into Trump’s election interferenceDA requests subpoena power to compel testimony from witnesses, such as Brad Raffensperger, who Trump asked to ‘find’ 11,780 votes The prosecutor for Georgia’s biggest county on Thursday requested a special grand jury with subpoena power to aid her investigation into former US president Donald Trump’s efforts to influence the state’s 2020 election results.In a letter to Fulton county’s chief judge, first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, district attorney Fani Willis wrote that multiple witnesses have refused to cooperate without a subpoena requiring their testimony.“Therefore, I am hereby requesting … that a special purpose grand jury be impaneled for the purpose of investigating the facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to possible attempts to disrupt the lawful administration of the 2020 elections in the State of Georgia,” Willis wrote.The investigation by Willis, a Democrat, is the most serious inquiry facing Trump in Georgia after he was recorded in a phone call pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to overturn the states election results based on unfounded claims of voter fraud.Criminal inquiry into Trump’s Georgia election interference gathers steamRead moreThe prosecutor specifically mentioned that Raffensperger, whom she described as an “essential witness”, had indicated he would only take part in an interview once presented with a subpoena.A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Trump adviser previously criticized the investigation as a “witch-hunt” designed to “score political points”.A spokesperson for the superior courts in Fulton county, which encompasses most of the state capital Atlanta, said there was no immediate timeline for a response to Willis’s request.In the letter, Willis said a special grand jury, which can subpoena witnesses, was needed because jurors can be impaneled for longer periods and focus exclusively on a single investigation.During the 2 January 2021 call, the former Republican president urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his Georgia loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The transcript quotes Trump telling Raffensperger: “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” which is the number Trump would have needed to win Georgia.Legal experts have said Trump’s phone calls may have violated at least three state election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, and intentional interference with performance of election duties.The possible felony and misdemeanor violations are punishable by fines or imprisonment.TopicsGeorgiaUS politicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      Biden and the Democratic Party Failed Us Badly on Voting Rights

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      It has been less than a week since President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris came to Atlanta and gave speeches supporting federal legislation to protect and ensure voting rights. Now the legislation is as good as dead. It happened that quickly, but many of us in Georgia saw it coming a long way off.African Americans, and most specifically faith leaders, have cried out during the last year, challenging various racist anti-voting bills — and we have heard virtually nothing from the White House or the Democratic Party.This lack of response, especially at the local level, has created concern within the Black community, as well as political apathy: In November’s governor’s race in Virginia, for instance, Black voters made up 16 percent of the electorate, compared with 20 percent four years earlier. In recent months, Georgia’s AME churches and other denominations have held virtual town halls of thousands of local faith leaders to discuss what is happening in Georgia. What we hear from our communities is clear: The late-to-the-game D.C.-focused strategy allowed extremists to march state to state and change our local election laws. It has been far too passive and does not represent the “good trouble” John Lewis preached.After all, it has been 10 long months since Georgia Republicans — following the historic victories of Joe Biden and Senate Democrats in the state — passed the “Election Integrity Act,” which will make it harder for many African Americans and people of color to vote. Among other things, it limits the ability to request absentee ballots and minimizes other voting opportunities. Last week, in their speeches, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris strongly and passionately denounced the law. But as they spoke, I kept asking myself where had that strength and passion been during the past 10 months? We saw the administration’s strong commitment on behalf of the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better Act, but not on voting rights. The White House slept on voting rights — and now our very democracy is at risk.Being a native Delawarean, I know Mr. Biden and worked on several of his campaigns for the U.S. Senate. No one should ever question his commitment to civil rights or the African American community. He is a genuine and great public servant.However, Mr. Biden, having been a member of the Senate for 36 years, wrongly thought the solution to ensuring voting rights lay in Washington, D.C. He expected elected officials would work across the aisle to pass meaningful legislation, as they often did when he was a senator. But, as so many of us have witnessed in recent years, Joe Biden’s Senate simply does not exist anymore. Instead, extremist Trump loyalists, desperate to keep their power, began an efficient and well-funded campaign to minimize Black and brown voters, first in Georgia, and then, in a domino effect, in state legislatures across the country.So what do we do now?First, President Biden must show his strength as a leader. The American people have little respect or patience for a weak leader, but they will support and stand with a strong one. Extreme Trump loyalists have been gutting voting rights with an ax, while Democrats have tried to defend them with a butter knife.It’s time for Mr. Biden to show the 50 senators who reliably back the Democratic agenda that the nation did not elect 51 presidents. He needs to use his powers as president to show that opposing him comes with consequences, not unlike how President Johnson played hardball during negotiations on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Neither friendships nor history with the Senate has worked, and inaction is unacceptable, so Mr. Biden must now draw a line in the sand. Our elected officials in Washington need the president to sign their bills, approve funding for their local projects, and secure their nominations for appointments. If senators are not going to support this top priority of the Biden administration, then the president needs to make clear that democracy will come first, before their own special projects, interests and priorities.Second, the White House and the Democratic Party need to create a massive education campaign on the changes that have been made to our local voting rights laws. The reality is that most people still do not know what’s happening. Building this narrative cannot be done with one trip to Georgia or with one speech, nor will it be done with overzealous rhetoric. This fight must be about educating and informing people, not politics as usual. Mr. Biden and his administration need to consistently share with the American people what these new pieces of anti-voting legislation across the country are doing to our democracy and to our people. He must share the stories of those who will now struggle to exercise their democratic right. The facts must be showcased until every American understands what has occurred over the past year.Third, the president needs to move the conversation on voting rights away from the failed Senate Democratic caucus and toward an energized voter registration effort that builds on what was achieved in Georgia, Arizona and other states in 2020. While there never is going to be a quick fix for what extremists have done to our democracy over the last year, we have to organize to counter the new roadblocks. Mr. Biden’s legislative efforts must transition to a nationwide campaign to register voters and help people make plans to vote. Unlike what happened during the last year, there needs to be much more consistent communication, coordination, engagement and support between the White House and those promoting and defending our democracy at the local level.Our collective history prepares Black and brown voters for potential voting battles on Election Day, and it’s imperative that our communities take on even greater responsibility in 2022. It is incumbent that African Americans not allow the events of the last year to create apathy in 2022. But the historic challenge we now face must also be extended to President Biden.As we observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday, let us remember his words, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Mr. President, at this historic moment, I have great confidence that you are strong enough, passionate enough and love this country enough to lead this army. But we need you to lead this fight as our president, not as a senator. This must not be the end of our fight; it needs to be our beginning. And to paraphrase King once again, please, listen to your conscience, and do what you know to be right. Lead us in the fight to save our great democracy — and we will follow.Bishop Reginald T. Jackson is presiding prelate of the 6th Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, which comprises 534 Georgia churches, totaling more than 90,000 parishioners. He also directed Georgia’s “Operation Voter Turnout,” a nonpartisan, multi-faith coalition to support voting rights during the 2020 general and runoff elections.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Before Elections, Georgia Republicans Again Consider Voting Restrictions

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      A sweeping 2021 law drew a legal complaint from the Justice Department. Legislators in the state are considering several new measures focused on ballot access and fraud investigations.ATLANTA — Butch Miller, a Republican leader of the Georgia State Senate, is running for lieutenant governor and faces a tough fight this spring against a primary opponent backed by former President Donald J. Trump.So perhaps it is no surprise that Mr. Miller, a co-sponsor of a sweeping and restrictive state voting law last year, has once again jumped into the fray, promoting a new measure to prohibit the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots, which he says would increase security — though no problems with their use by voters have been verified.“Drop boxes are the weakest link in our election security,” Mr. Miller said in a statement. “This change removes that weakest link without doing anything to prevent access. It’s actually easier to vote early in person — and we provide far more days than most states for that.”Georgia was a key to President Biden’s victory as well as the Democratic takeover of the Senate, and this is the second year that the state’s Republicans are focused on voting restrictions. Mr. Miller’s proposal is among a raft of new bills that underscore how much Republicans have embraced Mr. Trump’s false narrative that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election.One measure under consideration would allow Georgians to use paper ballots if they have concerns about the recently purchased touch-screen voting machines that were the subject of fantastical fraud claims promulgated by some of Mr. Trump’s supporters.Another proposal would allow the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to open inquiries into allegations of voter fraud. Yet another would create a constitutional amendment to prevent noncitizens from voting — even though they are already barred from voting under existing state law.An absentee ballot box in Atlanta before the 2020 general election. Republicans have zeroed in on the Democratic stronghold with an investigation into the Fulton County election board. Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesAt the same time, the elections board in Fulton County, the most populous in the state and a Democratic stronghold, is the subject of a state investigation of its management practices. In theory, this investigation could lead to a Republican-directed takeover of the local election board — one that was made possible by the 2021 election law.The investigation, and the new proposals before the Republican-controlled legislature, has triggered fresh anger among Democrats who believe that the measures could contribute to an already unfair playing field in a state where numerous Trump-backed candidates are running for statewide offices.“The most disturbing thing is that the people who have an iron grip on power in the General Assembly believe that they have to continue to suppress voting in order to maintain that iron grip,” said David Worley, a Democrat and former member of the state elections board. “And they’re willing to try any method at hand to do that.”Though Republicans dominate the state legislature, some of the proposals may prove to be, at most, performative gestures by lawmakers eager to show the party’s base that they are responsive to Trump-fueled concerns about voter fraud. The measure that would expand the role of the state investigations bureau, backed by the powerful House speaker, David Ralston, may have the greatest chance of success.Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, sounded a less than enthusiastic note this week about going much further than the 2021 voting law, which he called “the No. 1-ranked elections integrity act in the country.”More than any other state, Georgia was the linchpin of Democrats’ fortunes in 2020, said Larry Sabato, a veteran political analyst and the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. The Republican stronghold not only flipped for Mr. Biden but delivered the Senate to him.“That’s why the new voting rules in Georgia and elsewhere matter so much,” he said. “Will they shave just enough votes from the Democratic column to put Republicans firmly back in the driver’s seat? If the G.O.P. sees that no penalty is paid for voter suppression, surely that will encourage Republicans to do it wherever they can get away with it.”He added: “In both 2022 and 2024, Georgia is going to be the canary in the coal mine. And it’s a pretty damn big canary.”State Senator Mike Dugan of Georgia shook hands last year with a fellow Republican state senator, Jeff Mullis, after the passage of a bill that would enact new voting restrictions. Ben Gray/Associated PressIn a year that saw Republican-led legislatures nationwide pile new restrictions on voting, the elections law that Georgia lawmakers passed last spring was less notable for its severity than for its specificity. The measure took dead aim at the record 1.3 million absentee votes cast the previous November, disproportionately by Democrats. It did so by sharply reining in the use of drop boxes that were favored by mail-in voters, imposing ID requirements on absentee ballots and raising stiff barriers to the distribution of mail-in ballot applications by both local officials and voting drives.Atop that, the law allowed for state takeovers of county election boards, banned mobile voting sites in heavily Democratic Atlanta and even barred residents from providing food and water to voters waiting in line at the polls.The 2021 statute drew a number of legal challenges, including by the U.S. Department of Justice, which argues that the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act by making it harder to vote and that it was racially motivated. Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game out of the state in protest.The state law, as well as federal voting rights legislation praised by Mr. Biden in a visit to Atlanta this week, is expected to be front and center in upcoming statewide campaigns. The governor’s race is likely to pit the country’s best-known voting rights advocate, Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, against either Mr. Kemp, whom Ms. Abrams has openly accused of voter suppression in her 2018 race against him, or former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Kemp’s Republican primary challenger, who has echoed Mr. Trump’s baseless fraud claims.In Atlanta on Tuesday, President Biden urged passage of federal legislation to protect the right to vote and the integrity of elections.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Tuesday, Mr. Kemp, in a news conference preceding Mr. Biden’s speech, defended the 2021 election law, saying that the Biden administration had “lied” about it — a reference to Mr. Biden’s untrue assertion that the law “ends voting hours early.”He blamed Mr. Biden, Ms. Abrams and Vice President Kamala Harris for the backlash to the law, including the loss of the All-Star Game, which he said had cost the state $100 million. He warned that the federal voting rights laws Mr. Biden was pushing for amounted to a political grab by Democrats.“Make no mistake,” he said, “Georgia is ground zero for the Biden-Harris assault on election integrity, as well as an attempt to federalize everything from how hard-working Georgians run their businesses, to what our kids are taught in school, to how we run elections.”Mr. Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, have both earned places atop Mr. Trump’s list of enemies for defying the former president’s demands that they help overturn his narrow electoral loss in Georgia.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 6Numerous inquiries. More