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      Two Georgia Republicans Censure Gov. Kemp and Raffensperger

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      The actions were driven by anger over the governor’s refusal to overturn the state’s 2020 primary results in favor of Trump.Republican Party officials in two deeply conservative counties voted to censure Gov. Brian Kemp and two other top party leaders in recent days, a sign that the Georgia governor continues to face grass-roots opposition from loyalists to former President Donald J. Trump, and the possibility of a primary challenge next year.In Whitfield county, in the northwest corner of the state, Republican officials unanimously voted to condemn Mr. Kemp, saying he “did nothing” to help Mr. Trump after the November election.“Because of Kemp’s betrayal of President Trump and his high unpopularity with the Trump GOP base, Kemp could end up costing the GOP the governor’s mansion because many Trump supporters have pledged not to vote for Kemp under any circumstances,” reads the resolution, which was adopted by acclimation.A similar resolution was adopted in Murray County, also in northern Georgia, by a nearly unanimous vote. It was opposed by only three of the dozens of members in attendance. Both counties also voted to censure Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.The resolutions hold no binding power over elected officials. Rather, party officials say their resolutions were intended to send a message to Mr. Kemp and other Republican lawmakers that their jobs may be in jeopardy.“I’d vote for Mickey Mouse before I would Kemp,” said Tony Abernathy, chairman of the Murray County Republican Party. “I know what I’ve got with Mickey Mouse. A RINO is useless.” RINO is the dismissive acronym for Republican in Name Only.After infuriating Mr. Trump by resisting his demands to overturn the state’s election results, Mr. Kemp has faced months of attacks, protests and opposition from his party’s base. Mr. Trump encouraged Republicans to retaliate by sending a hard-right loyalist to oppose Mr. Kemp in the primary next year.Mr. Kemp and his aides saw a path to redemption within the party in the controversial election bill that the legislature passed last month, which the governor has forcefully defended in dozens of public appearances even as the new law adds new limits to the right to vote in Georgia.Other resolutions adopted by the counties supported a bill passed in the Republican-controlled Statehouse stripping Delta of a $35 million jet fuel tax break and urged Georgians to boycott Major League Baseball and “woke companies” that criticized the election law.“The Republican grassroots are angry,” said Debbie Dooley, a conservative activist, who helped distribute drafts of the resolutions and encouraged Trump supporters to attend the local meetings. “These resolutions will let Gov. Kemp, Lt. Gov. Duncan and Secretary of State Raffensperger know we’re going to work against them in the Republican primary next year.” More

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      in US Politics

      Georgia is updating Jim Crow. Now, he’s Dr James Crow | David Daley and Rev Jesse Jackson

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      Georgia has a long history of racial inequity at the ballot box. Voters wait an average of just six minutes in line after 7pm in precincts where 90% of residents are white. But when 90% of voters are Black? The wait soars to 51 minutes.Between 2012 and 2018, Georgia shuttered 8% of all precincts statewide, and moved 40% of them. According to a study by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the combination of fewer precincts and longer commutes could have kept as many as 85,000 people from casting a ballot in 2018. This disproportionately burdened Black voters, who were 20% less likely to make it to the polls as a result.Now Georgia’s GOP legislature has enacted another 92 pages of voting restrictions and regulations that will make voting much more complicated and burdensome. It’s harder to register to vote. It’s more difficult to get a ballot. And it will be tougher to cast it.The new law cuts the amount of time that voters have to request an absentee ballot in half. It adds additional new voter ID provisions for requesting and casting an absentee ballot; studies show that voters of color are much more likely than white voters to have their ballots disqualified for missing that step.It limits four of the state’s most populous, and predominantly Black counties, to just 23 drop boxes – down from 94 during the 2020 election – and makes them available only during government office hours, rather than around the clock. Mobile voting centers have been banned. Early voting hours have been sharply curtailed.The right to vote is the foundation of every right we hold as a citizen. It should be simple for everyone to make their voice heard. That should be the goal of every election. We should be able to register easily, request a ballot without unnecessary complications, and cast that ballot without waiting in long lines or driving long distances. When you limit the ways in which people can vote, you are limiting the number of people who can vote. All of this is common sense. None of it should even be controversial.The supporters of these provisions suggest that they are necessary because of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election – a baseless assertion for which they are unable to provide any evidence. Or they suggest that they’re needed to restore faith, especially among Republicans, in the legitimacy of our elections. This is especially convoluted, since nothing has done more to damage that sense than month after month of these unfounded “fraud” allegations. It’s also hard to accept these arguments in good faith, since these new voting laws arrive so quickly after an election many of these same lawmakers refuse to admit they lost.Yet in recent days, as Republicans race to enact similar new restrictions in Texas, Arizona, Florida and elsewhere, many conservative lawmakers have suggested that these tough laws they are so hurriedly passing won’t actually affect turnout at all. Some in the media have shrugged as well, and in a particularly egregious “both sides” framing, have criticized President Biden for being too hyperbolic in calling the Georgia law “Jim Crow on steroids”. The New York Times pointed to political science research that purports little connection between turnout and convenience, and suggests that the partisan impact of easier mail-in voting is negligible. Those who really want to vote will find a way, some suggest. Others argue that expanded absentee voting makes no real difference, and may have provided Democrats with as little as a 0.2 percentage-point increase in turnout last November.These arguments fail to understand how voter suppression works, and how it has been used to hold back the Black vote, especially across the south, for decades.Those who want to keep people from voting can’t rely on fire hoses or crude Jim Crow tactics like poll taxes and literacy tests any longer. They need to modernize Jim Crow, so that he becomes Dr James Crow, a specialist in statistics, expert at layering traps for Black voters while pretending they’re race neutral. Then they raise the barriers for Black voters and other communities of color by demanding the particular forms of ID lawmakers know they’re least likely to have, or assign more voters and fewer machines to some precincts, generating lines just a little bit longer, perhaps carefully positioning other voting centers a few miles away, maybe just too far for convenient public transportation. The intent and the effect are the same: creating restrictions that keep Black voters away from the polls.This is voter suppression by skimming: discourage some people from voting with longer lines. Knock others off the lists through a roll purge, often after incorrectly determining that voters had moved, and force them to cast a provisional ballot. Pass an ID requirement, then close the department of motor vehicles offices in Black counties. Make it more difficult for others to get an absentee ballot. Standardize the early voting hours from 9am to 5pm, rather than 7am to 7pm, to make it that much harder for working people. Make fewer drop boxes available, and limit those hours to the workday as well.Pretty soon all of that adds up. And in Georgia, it doesn’t need to add up to that much to make a major impact.56 years after Selma, we are still debating whether some citizens in a democracy are second-classAfter all, 0.2% in Georgia isn’t statistical noise at all. President Biden defeated Donald Trump in Georgia last November by fewer than 12,000 votes. He earned 49.5% of the vote. Trump captured 49.3. The difference? That’s right: 0.2%.The then incumbent senator David Perdue fell just 13,470 votes short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff with Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff – a race Perdue would lose nine weeks later, handing Democrats control of the US Senate. The difference between a runoff or a Perdue victory? That’s right: 0.27%.In 2018, Governor Brian Kemp defeated Stacey Abrams by fewer than 55,000 votes. That’s within the range that the Journal-Constitution study suggested could have been dissuaded by longer commutes to the polls. Kemp’s office – he made the rules for his own race as the state’s then – secretary of state – also reportedly stalled 53,000 voter registration applications ahead of the election; 80% of those belonged to Blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans, according to the Associated Press.Then, when activists like Abrams’s Fair Fight and Black Voters Matter redouble their efforts to overcome suppression by working even harder to register and turn out voters, academics and New York Times analysts reach the clueless conclusion that these restrictive efforts don’t really matter, or that they could inspire a backlash that raises Black turnout. Stop, please. Sometimes a runner lugging an extra 10-pound weight might finish ahead of a competitor carrying none at all. That hardly makes the race fair, or the extra burden negligible. It means they had to work harder for the same opportunity.Just as importantly: voting rights aren’t about partisan outcomes. They’re about fairness and equality for all.We all deserve the same access to the polls. No matter what hours we work. No matter where we live, or whether our ID is up to date from a recent move. No matter if we want to vote by mail or in-person. Yet almost 56 years after Selma, after the Voting Rights Act, we are still debating whether some citizens in a democracy are second-class. On the simplest of questions, in much of America, we still have so very far to go.
      The Rev Jesse L Jackson Sr is the founder and president of the Rainbow Push Coalition
      David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy More

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      in US Politics

      Georgia governor claims MLB All-Star voting rights move hurts Black voters

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      The Republican governor of Georgia stepped up his attack on Major League Baseball on Saturday, over its decision to pull its All-Star Game from the state in response to a new voting law.“It’s minority-owned businesses that have been hit harder than most because of an invisible virus, by no fault of their own,” Brian Kemp said. “And these are the same minority businesses that are now being impacted by another decision that is by no fault of their own.”The Fox News host Sean Hannity thundered this week that MLB “has now cost the people of Georgia almost $100m in revenue”.“Every person in Georgia should be furious,” he added.But experts dispute that losing the All-Star game will have so heavy an impact.Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross, told the Guardian this week: “There is some loss, so it’s not zero, but it’s a whole lot closer to zero than the $100m number Atlanta was throwing around.”On Saturday Kemp spoke alongside the Georgia attorney general, Chris Carr, also a Republican, at a seafood restaurant miles from the stadium in the Atlanta suburbs where the game would have been held. He said he didn’t think the business was minority-owned.The game will now be played in Denver. Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, has claimed the city will receive an economic boost of $190m.Matheson said: “There’s no real reason that you should believe economic impact numbers that are commissioned by people who are made to look good by big economic impact numbers.”Kemp noted that Denver has a much smaller percentage of African Americans than Atlanta.Critics say the Georgia voting law will disproportionately affect communities of color. Aklima Khondoker, state director of the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said Kemp’s news conference was an attempt to deflect from that as he gears up to try to win a second term.“He’s pivoting away from all of the malicious things that we understand that this bill represents to people of color in Georgia,” she said.Elsewhere in the state, about two dozen protesters turned out near Augusta National as the Masters golf championship continued, holding signs that said “Let Us Vote” and “Protect Georgia Voting Rights”.The MLB commissioner, Rob Manfred, has said he made the decision to move the All-Star game after discussions with players and the Players Alliance, an organization of Black players formed after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, and that the league opposed restrictions to the ballot box.On Saturday an MLB spokesman said the league had no immediate additional comment.Several groups have filed lawsuits over the Georgia voting measure, which includes strict identification requirements for voting by mail. It expands weekend early voting but limits the use of ballot drop boxes, makes it a crime to hand out food or water to voters waiting in line and gives the state election board new powers to intervene in county election offices and to replace local officials.That has led to concerns the Republican-controlled board could exert more influence over elections, including the certification of county results.The rewrite of Georgia’s election rules – signed by Kemp last month – follows Donald Trump’s repeated lies about electoral fraud after his loss to Joe Biden. The Democratic candidate won Georgia, before two Democrats won Senate runoffs there in January, tipping control of the chamber.Democrats have assailed the Georgia law as an attempt to suppress Black and Latino votes, with Biden calling it “Jim Crow in the 21st century”. Carr and Kemp blasted that comparison.“This made-up narrative that this bill takes us back to Jim Crow – an era when human beings were being killed and who were truly prevented from casting their vote – is preposterous,” Carr said. “It is irresponsible, and it’s fundamentally wrong.” More

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      in Elections

      How Brian Kemp Is Rebounding Against Trump’s Wrath

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      After resisting Donald Trump’s demands to overturn Georgia’s election results, Gov. Brian Kemp was an outcast in his own party. Now he’s embraced the state’s new voting bill as a way to rebuild his standing.Three years ago, Brian Kemp was elected governor when Republicans embraced his nearly decade-long quest to restrict voting access in Georgia. Now he has tied his re-election hopes to making voting in the state even harder.After infuriating former President Donald J. Trump by resisting his demands to overturn the state’s election results, Mr. Kemp became an outcast in his own party. He spent weeks fending off a daily barrage of attacks from right-wing media, fellow Republican lawmakers and party officials, and Mr. Trump vowed to retaliate by sending a hard-right loyalist to oppose him in the primary next year.But the sweeping new voting bill Mr. Kemp signed two weeks ago has provided a lifeline to the embattled governor to rebuild his standing among the party’s base. The bill severely curtails the ability to vote in Georgia, particularly for people of color. Mr. Kemp has seized on it as a political opportunity, defending the law as one that expands voting access, condemning those who criticize it and conflating the criticism with so-called cancel culture.It’s an argument he believes may restore him to the good graces of Georgia Republicans after being publicly derided by Mr. Trump, a predicament that has proved fatal to the career aspirations of other ambitious conservatives.Since signing the bill into law on March 25, Mr. Kemp has done roughly 50 interviews, 14 with Fox News, promoting the new restrictions with messaging that aligns with Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the election was rigged against him.“He knows that this is a real opportunity and he can’t blow it, because I don’t think he gets another layup like this again anytime soon,” said Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer whom Mr. Trump made ambassador to Luxembourg, and is also a close ally of Mr. Kemp.A political ascent would represent an unlikely turnaround for Mr. Kemp, making him the most prominent Republican to find a way to overcome Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution, and perhaps providing an early test of the former president’s ability to impose his will on the party’s electoral future. Mr. Kemp’s argument is designed to pump adrenaline into the conservative vein, by focusing on two of the most animating topics of the political right: election mechanics and an ominous portrayal of the Democratic left.“They folded like a wet dishrag to the cancel culture,” he said, responding to businesses that publicly objected to the legislation, in an interview on Fox Business on Tuesday. “It is woke in real life, and Americans and Georgians should be scared. I mean, what event are they going to come after next? What value that you have — the way that you live your life — are they coming after next? Are they going to come after your small business?”Mr. Kemp declined an interview request.Whether Mr. Kemp will be able to make amends with Mr. Trump remains unclear. Late Tuesday, the former president signaled how difficult it would be to win him over, releasing a statement slamming Mr. Kemp and Georgia Republicans for not going far enough to restrict voting access in the new law.“Kemp also caved to the radical left-wing woke mob who threatened to call him racist if he got rid of weekend voting,” Mr. Trump said. “Well, he kept it, and they still call him racist!”Mr. Kemp was the subject of right-wing attacks after resisting demands to overturn Georgia’s election results.John Bazemore/Associated PressIf Mr. Trump’s animosity lingers, he has the potential to complicate Mr. Kemp’s re-election effort by endorsing a rival and attacking the governor. Some political allies of Mr. Kemp are trying to broker a truce. Mr. Evans, for instance, is in South Florida this week aiming to engage in a delicate round of diplomacy that would get Mr. Trump on board with Mr. Kemp. He said he’s talking to Mr. Kemp daily but isn’t particularly optimistic.“There are some times,” Mr. Evans said, “when the hate is so deep and so ingrained that there’s nothing, and that’s when you just have to go to divorce. There’s no gift, no diamond, no car, no flowers, no nothing that will ever repair it.”Mr. Trump’s harsh stance notwithstanding, there are many conservatives in the state who remain fixated on the losses by Mr. Trump and the state’s two Republican senators, and are happy to see Mr. Kemp finally joining their fight, no matter how opportunistic it might seem.“I’ve not seen our party in Georgia as united in five and half years,” said Chip Lake, a longtime Republican strategist in the state. “This has allowed people who are angry at Brian Kemp for not doing enough for Donald Trump to get back on board with Brian Kemp.”Not every Republican has signed on. Debbie Dooley, a conservative activist in Georgia, said that the Republican base remembered Mr. Kemp’s denying Mr. Trump’s request to call for a special session to address the presidential election results, and that it remained eager to punish him for what it views as failing to fully investigate claims of fraud.“He is hoping Trump voters forget he was a coward,” she said. “He undermined us at every turn during investigation of election fraud, and now because he is talking tough in regard to M.L.B., Delta and Coke, he thinks we will forgive him. We won’t.”The most recent polling, conducted before Mr. Kemp signed the voting bill, showed that 15 percent to 30 percent of Georgia Republicans disapproved of his time as governor, largely because of his performance during the 2020 election.The new law Mr. Kemp is championing makes it harder to acquire an absentee ballot, creates new restrictions and complications for voting and hands sweeping new power over the electoral process to Republican legislators. It has drawn harsh criticism from local companies like Coca-Cola and Delta, and prompted Major League Baseball to move its All-Star Game out of suburban Atlanta as a form of protest.Mr. Kemp has used the rebukes to fire up the Republican base. He made little effort to calm tensions with some of his state’s most prominent corporate leaders, and said that baseball executives had “caved to fear, political opportunism, and liberal lies” in deciding to relocate the All-Star Game. Through it all, he has positioned himself as a fierce defender of Georgia’s sovereignty, saying, “Georgians will not be bullied.’’Mr. Kemp’s embrace of the voting law appears to have helped his standing among Georgia Republicans. Former Representative Doug Collins, Mr. Trump’s preferred intraparty rival for the governorship, is now leaning toward a 2022 Senate bid instead, according to strategists and activists in the state. The two remaining Republicans weighing a bid are not as well known and would face a tougher time mounting a serious challenge to Mr. Kemp, who has already banked more than $6.3 million for his re-election campaign. He’s now fund-raising off the voting bill, wrapping his re-election website in a plea for funds to help “defend election integrity.”“Activists in my own county who were dead set to finding someone to primary him are saying maybe he does deserve another chance,” said Jason Shepherd, the chairman of the Republican Party in Cobb County, who is running to lead the state party. “It’s going to make people less likely to wade into the race.”Mr. Kemp was first elected in 2018 after receiving President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement in the Republican primary.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe two other lawmakers mulling primary bids are Vernon Jones, the former Democratic state legislator who became a Republican in January, and Burt Jones, a state senator. Both say they are assessing the political landscape and expect to make a decision soon. The two men took different approaches to Mr. Kemp, underscoring how quickly the politics have shifted for the governor.In an email, Vernon Jones said Mr. Kemp’s appeal to the base was “too little, too late,” casting him as profiting off a cause he neglected in November.“Governor Kemp sat back and allowed the legislature to come in and hammer out the new bill, and then in an effort to mislead the public, he chose himself as the poster boy for election reform in Georgia,” he said. Yet Burt Jones praised Mr. Kemp’s management of the moment, admitting that “what has gone on the last week has not hurt him among his base.”Every week that potential challengers deliberate over whether to enter the race gives Mr. Kemp more time to make his case to grass-roots conservatives.“You can’t beat somebody with nobody,” said Mr. Lake, the Republican strategist. “As every day goes by, you’re getting farther and farther away from Donald Trump’s presidency and Brian Kemp gets stronger with the base.”In many ways, Mr. Kemp’s embrace of the legislation signifies a return to the conservative language — and voting issues — that defined his political career. Billing himself as a “politically incorrect conservative,” Mr. Kemp has long been one of the left’s most enduring villains because of his defeat of Stacey Abrams, who was vying in 2018 to become the nation’s first Black female governor.Mr. Kemp, then the secretary of state overseeing Georgia’s elections, stalled 53,000 voter registrations, which were disproportionately from Black voters. Ms. Abrams and her allies argued that Mr. Kemp had used his position to engineer a “stolen” election, a charge he denied.Since then the two have spent years engaged in a contentious argument over voting rights, an issue that rallies their parties’ bases in the state. In an interview with a sports radio program this week, Mr. Kemp accused Ms. Abrams of running the “biggest racket in America right now” with her claims of voter suppression.Democrats say his ardent support of the law and attacks on Ms. Abrams are a cynical effort to bolster his standing among his conservative base while suppressing votes for his general election opponents.“This is all politics,” said Representative Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, who replaced the civil rights icon John Lewis in Congress. “Let’s also be clear that a part of that politics is keeping Black and brown people away from the polls so he can continue to win elections in Georgia.” More

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      Why Georgia's Voting Laws Are Not Like Colorado's

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      After Major League Baseball announced recently that it would move the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in protest of new voting restrictions in Georgia, numerous prominent Republicans accused it of hypocrisy.“Georgia has 17 days of in-person early voting, including two optional Sundays; Colorado has 15,” Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia told Fox News. “So what I’m being told, they also have a photo ID requirement. So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina made a similar argument in a widely circulated post on Twitter.But while the 15-day and 17-day numbers are accurate, the overall comparison is not. Here are four key differences between Colorado’s and Georgia’s systems.In Colorado, every registered voter receives a mail ballot by default.In Georgia, people who want to vote by mail must apply, and the new law more than halves the time they have to do that: Previously, they could apply as much as 180 days before an election, but now no more than 78 days before. Georgia also forbids officials to send voters an absentee ballot application unless they request it.In Colorado, when residents apply for a driver’s license, they are automatically registered to vote. And if they aren’t registered through that process, they can register separately anytime, including on Election Day.In Georgia, all prospective voters must complete a registration form, and the deadline is a month before Election Day.In Colorado, only newly registered voters have to provide identification with their mail-in ballot; for subsequent elections, all that’s required is their signature. And contrary to Mr. Kemp’s statement, there is no photo requirement: Voters can use a birth certificate, a naturalization document, a Medicare or Medicaid card, a utility bill, a bank statement, a paycheck or another government document that shows their name and address.In Georgia, only photo identification is acceptable for regular mail-in ballots, and it has to be one of six specific types. The requirement will apply to everyone who votes by mail, not just to newly registered voters as in Colorado.In Colorado, there were 368 ballot drop boxes last year across the state’s 64 counties, not just in government buildings but also at schools, parks, libraries, businesses and more. Boxes were open 24 hours a day.In Georgia, the new law requires at least one drop box in each of the 159 counties. (Mr. Kemp and other officials note that before the pandemic, Georgia didn’t have drop boxes at all.) The boxes will be only at registrars’ and absentee ballot clerks’ offices or inside early-voting sites, and open during limited hours.In 2020, Colorado had the second-highest turnout rate in the country: 76.4 percent of eligible voters, behind only Minnesota, according to data compiled by the United States Elections Project. Georgia was 26th, with a turnout rate of 67.7 percent of eligible voters. More

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      in Elections

      How Georgia's New Law Risks Making Election Subversion Easier

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      A reminder from a January phone call that the reform bill by congressional Democrats may not have the proper protections.What would have happened if the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had responded, “OK, I’ll try,” in a January phone call after President Trump asked him to “find” 11,000 votes?No one can be sure. What is clear is that the question has been overlooked in recent months. Public attention has mostly moved on from Mr. Trump’s bid to overturn the election; activists and politicians are focused more on whether to restrict or expand voting access, particularly by mail.But trying to reverse an election result without credible evidence of widespread fraud is an act of a different magnitude than narrowing access. A successful effort to subvert an election would pose grave and fundamental risks to democracy, risking political violence and secessionism.Beyond any provisions on voting itself, the new Georgia election law risks making election subversion easier. It creates new avenues for partisan interference in election administration. This includes allowing the state elections board, now newly controlled by appointees of the Republican State Legislature, to appoint a single person to take control of typically bipartisan county election boards, which have important power over vote counting and voter eligibility.The law also gives the Legislature the authority to appoint the chair of the state election board and two more of its five voting members, allowing it to appoint a majority of the board. It strips the secretary of state of the chair and a vote.Even without this law, there would still be a risk of election subversion: Election officials and administrators all over the country possess important powers, including certification of election results, that could be abused in pursuit of partisan gain. And it’s a risk that H.R. 1, the reform bill congressional Democrats are pushing, does relatively little to address.The new Georgia law does not inherently make it easier to “find” 11,000 votes. Almost all of the powers that the Legislature might use already existed — they were just vested in other people or bodies. They could have been abused before and could be in the future, regardless of the new law.And the law has eligibility requirements for a chair that exclude many of the sort of people who would seem likeliest to abuse their authority, including anyone who has been a political candidate, campaign contributor or party organizer in the two years before the appointment. This is not guaranteed to preclude a rabid partisan leading the board, but no such checks had existed on the secretary of state. (Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, previously served in the Georgia House of Representatives.)The law takes power from the very person, Mr. Raffensperger, who a mere three months ago rebuffed Mr. Trump’s plea to find 11,000 votes. State legislators demoted Mr. Raffensperger for a reason: Many were probably sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s allegations. And if the Legislature had a problem with how Mr. Raffensperger handled the 2020 election, it is reasonable to wonder whether it might have supported board members aggressively backing the claims advanced by Mr. Trump.Can state boards, county boards or anyone else use their administrative powers to flip electoral outcomes? After the November election, a majority of Republican members of Congress and state attorneys general signed on to efforts that would have invalidated millions of votes and brought about a constitutional crisis. With that backdrop, it seems naïve to assume that no one would try to abuse such power, whether in Georgia or elsewhere.It’s worth going back to Mr. Trump’s infamous call. While the oft-quoted line about “finding” votes makes it sound as if he wanted Mr. Raffensperger to manufacture votes out of thin air, Mr. Trump said he had already found the votes, in the form of thousands of ballots he said were cast illegally:“We have all the votes we need. You know, we won the state. If you took, these are the most minimal numbers, the numbers that I gave you, those are numbers that are certified, your absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses, your out-of-state voters, 4,925. You know when you add them up, it’s many more times, it’s many times the 11,779 number.”In addition to the 4,925 out-of-state voters mentioned, Mr. Trump baselessly asserted in the call that there were hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots with forged signatures. He alleged, based on imperfect matches between lists of voters, that there were 4,502 voters who voted but weren’t registered; 18,325 voters with vacant addresses; 904 voters who voted only with a P.O. box address; and nearly 5,000 votes by dead people. And with virtually no evidence whosever, he alleged great malfeasance in Atlanta’s Fulton County, including 18,000 votes having to do with someone who did something nefarious and “3,000 pounds” of shredded ballots.County and state election officials hold a variety of powers relevant to such claims. They evaluate whether to accept or reject ballots, and they certify results. In Georgia, they hear eligibility challenges. It would have been hard to employ these powers to aid Mr. Trump, let alone to survive a subsequent court challenge. But there are levers that they could have at least tried to pull, even if it’s not clear what would have come of it.One option is that the state board could have usurped the power of Fulton County, based on the president’s allegations in the general election and other allegations from the primary (the law requires evidence of failed administration in at least two elections over the prior two years). The state board could have either used the president’s allegations as a basis to refuse to certify the result or to disqualify otherwise eligible voters.It would be hard or even impossible to pull this off immediately after an election. The law requires a fairly drawn-out hearing process before the state can interfere in county elections. The preliminary hearing can’t be held for at least 30 days after an initial petition, which is after the Georgia certification deadline. But perhaps a nefarious board could lay the groundwork earlier, potentially putting a newly appointed superintendent in control before the elections, when he or she would have the ability to pre-emptively disqualify voters and ballots.County election boards heard similar kinds of challenges to voter eligibility during the Georgia runoff. The state Republican Party and a Texas group challenged the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in December, based on whether a voter appeared to match someone on the Postal Service list of people in the National Change of Address Registry. A few small counties actually went through with trying to invalidate voters on this basis.This eligibility challenge was rejected by the U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, who happens to be the sister of Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the 2018 governor’s race in Georgia to Brian Kemp. But although the eligibility challenge faltered in the runoff, it is not obvious that ironclad protections exist against eligibility challenges, either as a matter of court precedent or federal law. A narrower challenge could have had a better chance of surviving a court challenge. And the new Georgia law makes these kinds of challenges easier, by allowing a single person to challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of voters.Another option to thwart an election might be to stop certification. The new Georgia law does not do much to make it easier to block certification, as the secretary of state — not the board or the Legislature — still certifies results statewide.But county election boards, including in Georgia, generally certify their election results, which the secretary of state then certifies statewide. Mr. Trump tried to thwart efforts to certify the results certification, turning routine hearings into televised events. In the end, Mr. Trump’s effort failed. Election officials overwhelmingly acted to preserve the integrity of the election, despite immense political pressure to act. Even so, the president did manage to persuade a handful of officials to vote against certification on dubious grounds.If secretaries of state had not certified election results, whether in Georgia or elsewhere, it might have plunged the country into crisis with uncertain consequences. It is not unreasonable to wonder whether there’s a chance of something similar occurring in the future, given how many House Republicans refused to certify the electoral count.Election administrators may have other options to undermine elections, besides disqualifying ballots and voters or decertifying the results, either in Georgia or in other states.All of this represents an obvious threat to American democracy. And yet the risk of election subversion has been overshadowed by the fight over new restrictions on voting, especially by mail. Progressives have been concerned about these kinds of restrictions for years, and the reform bill H.R. 1 was written in part as a response. But since the law was mainly devised before the 2020 election, its provisions don’t directly address the new risk that election officials could subvert election results. There’s no provision, for instance, requiring nonpartisan administration or certification of federal elections.H.R. 1 does have provisions that would indirectly limit the options available to actors who might try to subvert elections. One notable example is a provision against voter caging, which precludes eligibility challenges based on matched lists, like the change of address notification challenge attempted in December. It also includes provisions that ensure basic election administration, like requiring that people don’t wait in line longer than 30 minutes.But with the main focus of the proposed law being to improve democracy, by expanding voting access and more, it is not at all obvious whether H.R. 1 amounts to a comprehensive effort to protect democracy. And even if it does have the protections it needs, the risk of election subversion has received such little attention that relevant provisions might not be included in a slimmed-down bill. Those provisions have not been mentioned in most proposals for a narrower bill. More

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      Ilhan Omar at odds with Stacey Abrams over Georgia All-Star Game boycott

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      The Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar has backed Major League Baseball’s decision to move its All-Star Game from Georgia over a restrictive new voting law. But in doing so she placed herself at odds with another leading progressive, the voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams.Abrams, who suffered a narrow defeat in the Georgia gubernatorial race in 2018, commended the MLB’s decision on Friday but said she was disappointed the game was being relocated.“I respect boycotts,” she said, “although I don’t want to see Georgia families hurt by lost events and jobs. Georgians targeted by voter suppression will be hurt as opportunities go to other states. We should not abandon the victims of [Republican] malice and lies – we must stand together.”On Saturday the PGA Tour and the PGA of America made similar arguments when they said they would not move events scheduled for Georgia this summer. The Masters, perhaps the biggest event in golf, begins in Augusta, Georgia this week.Many observers question the accepted wisdom that big sporting events bring economic benefits but on Sunday, on CNN’s State of the Union, Omar was asked if she agreed with Abrams.“We know that boycotts have allowed for justice to be delivered in many spaces,” Omar said. “The civil rights movement was rooted in boycotts. We know that apartheid ended in South Africa because of boycotts.“And so our hope is that this boycott will result in changes in the law because we understand that when you restrict people’s ability to vote, you create a democracy that isn’t fully functioning for all of us, and if we are to continue to be beacon of hope for all democracies around the world we must stand our ground.”Conservatives have protested the MLB decision to take the All-Star Game away from Georgia. On Friday, Trump told supporters they should “boycott baseball” in return.Among other measures, the Georgia law applies restrictions to early and mail-in voting, measures likely to affect minority participation.Republicans have countered Democratic protests by saying the law merely seeks to avoid electoral fraud, which Donald Trump claimed was rampant in his defeat by Joe Biden in Georgia and elsewhere – a lie repeatedly laughed out of court.Omar was asked if other states which do not even allow early or mail-in voting should examine their own laws.“They certainly should,” she said. “I mean, Minnesota is not No1 in voter turnout and participation because we are special, even though we are. It’s because we have made voting accessible for people. And it is really important that every single state, we examine their voting laws and make sure that voting is accessible to everyone.”Omar also referred to pending federal legislation which seeks to counter moves by Republican-led states. The For the People Act, technically known as HR1, has passed the House but seems unlikely to pass the 50-50 Senate unless Democrats reform or abolish the filibuster, under which bills must attract 60 votes to pass.“It’s also going to be really important for us to continue to push HR1,” Omar said, “which makes [voting] accessible nationwide and strengthens our democracy.” More

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      Lawmaker Park Cannon on Georgia voting law: ‘A regression of our rights is happening’

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      When the governor of Georgia recently signed sweeping new voting restrictions into law, Park Cannon, a 29-year-old state representative from Atlanta, was knocking on his door.Cannon wanted to witness Brian Kemp signing the bill, but was denied entry. She wound up handcuffed, dragged out of the state capitol and charged with two felonies, obstruction of law enforcement and disruption of the general assembly.Images of her arrest spread across the world, juxtaposed with an image of Kemp signing the bill surrounded by white men and under a picture of a slave plantation. It was a remarkably powerful echo of the Jim Crow era – and the fight over voting rights in America.The Guardian spoke with Cannon about her arrest and Georgia’s new voting law.Guardian: I wanted to ask how you’re doing and what the last week has been like.Park Cannon: Well, thank you for asking first of all. As a Black woman, self-care is a buzzword many of us are trying to internalize and to act on. So I’m very blessed in this moment to be spending time with family. We do not have a full medical report on my injuries yet. However, I remain hopeful that I will be healed soon and back with the people.Take me back to last Thursday night and walk me through what happened. What was going through your mind?I am internally elected as the [state Democratic] caucus secretary, like Rosa Parks was with the [local] NAACP. In that role, my job has been to witness, and take minutes, on legislative occurrences such as bill signings. I have bill-signing pens from Governor Kemp as well as Governor [Nathan] Deal to prove this. And these bills, as they are enacted into law, they matter to Georgians. They matter to the issues that we represent.When I was notified, irregularly, that Senate bill 202 was being signed, I was knocking at the door as I regularly do. I was looking to law enforcement to say the protocol and for us to be able to enter the room and sign the bills … all that I wanted to do was get information back to members.I wanted to without a doubt be a witness to Senate bill 202 being signed because I had been a part of the process.Let me ask about that picture of Governor Kemp surrounded by six white men, underneath a picture of a plantation. What was it like for you to see that picture?When I see the photo of Kemp, in his office, perched at his desk, strategically positioned under a disgraceful painting of a south Georgia plantation, I immediately think about the Georgians who have reached out to me to say, ‘Oh my gosh, my family had been working at that location for years.’ And on top of that, he was flanked by a group of six white legislators, all males. In one stroke of the pen, there was an erasure of decades of sacrifices, marches … as well as the tears that Georgians have shed as they vote during perilous times.So when I juxtapose that with the photo of [my] unlawful arrest, it’s painful. Both physically and emotionally. I truly feel as if time is moving in slow motion.What do you mean by that?It feels as though a regression of our rights is happening. And there are so many necessitated steps to revive our democracy. But we want to move forward, and we want to be united, so we need for Americans to keep knocking.Why was it important for you to be in that room?This would not be my first time being the only person of color or Black woman in the room.As the secretary for 78 members, it is my job to be present for meetings, bill signings, press conferences and general assembly sessions so the professionalism of our state is protected. So to see the continued lack of professionalism, and lack of regard for people’s voting rights, it reflects the lack of concern other elected officials have for the civil rights and the human rights of Black and brown citizens.The provisions in the bill that a Georgian is not able to bring water or food to their friends or family when they’re waiting in line – that’s a human rights violation. Being in the room to witness these violations is more critical now than ever.I’m curious if you’ve heard from the governor’s office about this, or from the speaker or anyone who was in the room.Gerald Griggs, Cannon’s attorney: We haven’t heard from the governor, the speaker or anyone in relation to this. We’re in the process of reaching out to the district attorney, we’ve heard from her. But as far as the members that were in the room, we haven’t anything from them, save for the public comments the governor has made.What have you made of what has unfolded this week with businesses taking a hard line against these bills and Republicans saying concerns are misinformed and exaggerated?Park Cannon: Make no mistake, Georgians understand corporate accountability. The reason we are called the No1 state to do business by the governor himself is because we are positioned as an international state with a capital city too busy to hate. What that means for Georgians is that corporate accountability is a historical engagement. This is nothing new.I’m glad people are watching. I’m glad the companies are hearing the people. I trust others will keep knocking.This video of what happened to you has been seen around the world. What do you want people to know?This is America. This is not about Republican or Democrat. This is about all of our rights. We must not lose sight of this issue. We must protect our right to vote. I encourage you to keep knocking.This interview has been condensed and edited More