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      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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      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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      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

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      Trump and Carlson lead backlash as MLB pulls All-Star Game from Georgia

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      Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson led rightwing backlash after Major League Baseball said it would not play its All-Star game in Georgia because of a new law that restricts voting rights in the state.The former president and the Fox News host some say is his Republican political heir thereby ranged themselves against current president Joe Biden and the Democrat he served as vice-president, Barack Obama.“Baseball is already losing tremendous numbers of fans,” Trump said in a statement, “and now they leave Atlanta with their All-Star Game because they are afraid of the radical left Democrats.“… Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with free and fair elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta and all?”Coke and Delta are among companies which have expressed concern over the Georgia law, which restricts early and mail-in voting, measures seen to target minority voters likely to back Democrats.Laws under consideration in other Republican-run states have attracted criticism from corporate America. The Georgia law was passed by Republicans after Biden won the state against Trump and Democrats won both Senate runoff elections in January.Referring to the segregation of the post-civil war south, Biden called the law: “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”In his own statement on Saturday, Obama congratulated MLB “for taking a stand on behalf of voting rights for all citizens”.He also said: “There’s no better way for America’s pastime to honor the great Hank Aaron, who always led by example.”Aaron, known as the Hammer, was a long-time MLB home-run record holder who played for the Atlanta Braves and endured racist abuse throughout his life in the sport. He died in January, aged 86.MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he had “decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB draft” from the home of the Atlanta Braves.“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”The move was not without precedent. In 2016 North Carolina lost the right to host high-profile NCAA college events over a bill which restricted rights for transgender people.On Friday night Carlson, who some say could be a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 if Trump does not run again, claimed MLB “believes it has veto power over the democratic process”.Before MLB acted, Biden said he would support moving events from Atlanta. Carlson said that showed the president was “willing to destroy even something as wholesome as the country’s traditional game purely to increase the power of his political party”.The chief of the MLB players union has indicated support for the move. In a statement on Friday, the New York Yankees great and Miami Marlins chief executive Derek Jeter said: “We should promote increasing voter turnout as opposed to any measures that adversely impact the ability to cast a ballot … We support the commissioner’s decision to stand up for the values of our game.”Georgia governor Brian Kemp – a bête noire for Trump over his refusal to overturn Biden’s win – said MLB had “caved to fear, political opportunism and liberal lies”. He also decried “cancel culture”, a key Republican talking point.Stacey Abrams, who Kemp beat in a 2018 election he ran as Georgia secretary of state, said she was “disappointed” the All-Star game would not be played in the state.But Abrams, who campaigns for voting rights and has become an influential figure in the national Democratic party, also said she was “proud of [MLB’s] stance on voting rights” and “urged events and productions to come and speak out or stay and fight”.Also on Friday, nearly 200 companies signed a statement expressing concern at moves to restrict voting rights in Republican-run states.Many observers pointed out that the political ramifications of MLB’s decision to move the All-Star Game will be stronger than the economic fallout, given that coronavirus-related restrictions would have placed limits on capacity at the event this year.A leading professor of sports economics warned that MLB could risk losing the support of conservatives in a fanbase which skews right.“After the country’s top professional basketball and football leagues embraced the Black Lives Matter movement last year,” Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College told the New York Times, “they faced organised boycotts from conservatives, though the effort ultimately had little effect. And baseball’s fanbase is older and whiter than basketball’s or football’s.” More

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      in Elections

      Georgia’s Election Law, and Why Turnout Isn’t Easy to Turn Off

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      Making voting convenient doesn’t necessarily translate into more votes, research shows.There’s nothing unusual about exaggeration in politics. But when it comes to the debate over voting rights, something more than exaggeration is going on.There’s a real — and bipartisan — misunderstanding about whether making it easier or harder to vote, especially by mail, has a significant effect on turnout or electoral outcomes. The evidence suggests it does not.The fight over the new Georgia election law is only the latest example. That law, passed last week, has been condemned by Democrats as voter suppression, or even as tantamount to Jim Crow.Democrats are understandably concerned about a provision that empowers the Republican-controlled State Legislature to play a larger role in election administration. That provision has uncertain but potentially substantial effects, depending on what the Legislature might do in the future. And it’s possible the law is intended to do exactly what progressives fear: reshape the electorate to the advantage of Republicans, soon after an electoral defeat, by making it harder to vote.And yet the law’s voting provisions are unlikely to significantly affect turnout or Democratic chances. It could plausibly even increase turnout. In the final account, it will probably be hard to say whether it had any effect on turnout at all.The Georgia lawThe full text of the Georgia bill is here, but the bill’s major effects can be boiled down to a few points:The law makes absentee voting harder. People must have a qualifying form of identification to vote by mail. The law also makes it harder to request and return an absentee ballot, restricting the period when people can apply for one and limiting the number of drop boxes where voters can return such a ballot in person.On balance, it might make in-person voting easier, especially in the general election (though it contains provisions that cut in both directions).The law expands the number of required days of early voting, including on the weekend days that progressives covet (two Saturdays are now required instead of one). There’s also a provision that requires large precincts with long lines to add machines, add staff or split the precinct. Depending on how this is rolled out, it could be a big win for voters in Georgia’s urban areas, who have dealt with some of the longest lines in the country.Cutting in the other direction is the gratuitous and probably ineffectual limitation on handing out food and water to people standing in line to vote. Of more concrete but still limited importance is a rule that makes it harder for people to cast a provisional ballot if they show up at the wrong precinct. (It’s worth noting that many states don’t count these ballots at all, and there were only around 10,000 total provisional ballots in Georgia in the last election, including those cast in the right precinct).It shortens the runoff period. Runoffs would be held four weeks after an initial election, instead of the nine weeks that had been in place for federal elections in the last few years. A main consequence would be to shorten early runoff voting to one week, instead of three, plausibly affecting turnout in exactly the kind of close, low-turnout race where it could easily be decisive.It empowers the State Legislature to play a larger role in election administration. It removes the secretary of state as chair of the state board of elections and allows the Legislature to appoint a majority of the board’s members, including the chair. And it empowers the state board to take over county boards of elections, if the circumstances merit it.These might prove to be very important. But for the purposes of this article, we are not considering them “voter suppression” provisions. They do not inherently make it harder for people to vote by restricting whether or how they can vote.If we leave aside the administrative provisions and the question of intent, the core question on voter suppression is to what extent does reducing voting options — like early voting in the runoffs or mail voting in general — reduce turnout and Democratic chances?The limited import of convenience votingFor decades, reformers have assumed that the way to increase turnout is to make voting easier.Yet surprisingly, expanding voting options to make it more convenient hasn’t seemed to have a huge effect on turnout or electoral outcomes. That’s the finding of decades of political science research on advance, early and absentee voting. One prominent study even found that early voting decreases turnout, though that’s a bit of an outlier.There’s essentially no evidence that the vast expansion of no-excuse absentee mail voting, in which anyone can apply for a mail absentee ballot, had any discernible effect on turnout in 2020. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise: Even universal vote by mail, in which every registered voter is automatically sent a mail ballot (as opposed to every voter having an opportunity to apply for one), increases turnout by only about 2 percent with no discernible partisan advantage.Believe it or not, turnout increased just as much in the states that didn’t have no-excuse absentee voting as it did in the states that added it for the first time. Similarly, Joe Biden improved over Hillary Clinton’s performance by three percentage points in the states that added it, compared with 2.9 points in the states that did not.A more rigorous study by political scientists at Stanford found that no-excuse mail voting might have increased turnout by a whopping 0.02 percent in the 2020 election. The study used a novel approach: The researchers compared the turnout among 65-year-olds in Texas, who were eligible to vote by mail without an excuse, with 64-year-olds in Texas, who weren’t. The turnout among 64-year-olds was indistinguishable from that of 65-year-olds, even though the latter group voted by mail in large numbers.Like Georgia, Texas did not require an identification to vote by mail, but has a strict ID requirement for in-person voting.The partisan makeup of the electorate didn’t appear to change, either. The Democratic share of voters appeared to tick up by two-tenths of a percentage point — enough to decide a very close election. But it’s also so small that it could just be statistical noise, with no effect at all. Social science methods just don’t offer the level of precision necessary to nail down whether this, or any, change might move the needle by a tenth of a point.The Georgia law doesn’t come anywhere close to eliminating no-excuse absentee voting, unlike what the political scientists tested in Texas. As a result, one might expect the new law to have an even smaller effect. (You could make a counterintuitive argument that making absentee voting harder is worse for Democrats than eliminating it altogether, and that Democrats might be better off discouraging people from mail voting to avoid unnecessary ballot rejections of people who could have successfully voted in person.)The Georgia runoff elections, while hardly a scientific case study, nonetheless offer another useful example. There were fewer opportunities to vote in advance compared with the general election, because of the shorter election campaign and the holiday season. Based on the drop-off in early voting, many analysts wound up underestimating the final turnout by 20 percent or more. In the end, turnout exceeded expectations. The number of Election Day voters was higher than it was in the general election, as many people who might have voted early if it weren’t for Christmas or New Year’s Day now turned out on Election Day.Maybe runoff turnout would have been higher with the same early voting opportunities as in the general. But maybe not. And none of this had any discernible negative effect on the Democrats, who of course did better than they did in the general.Why doesn’t convenience matter?How is it possible that something like eliminating no-excuse absentee mail voting, a method beloved by millions of voters, wouldn’t materially affect turnout or election results?One simple answer is that convenience isn’t as important as often assumed. Almost everyone who cares enough to vote will brave the inconveniences of in-person voting to do so, whether that’s because the inconveniences aren’t really so great, or because they care enough to suffer them.This supposes a certain reasonable level of convenience, of course: Six-hour lines would change the calculation for many voters. And indeed, long lines do affect turnout. It also supposes a certain level of interest. Someone might think: There’s no way I’m waiting a half-hour in line to vote for dogcatcher. Similarly, the importance of a convenient voting option probably grows as the significance of a race decreases.The implication, though, is that nearly every person will manage to vote if sufficiently convenient options are available, even if the most preferred option doesn’t exist. That makes the Georgia election law’s effort to curb long lines potentially quite significant. Not only might it mitigate the already limited effect of restricting mail voting, but it might even outweigh it.Another reason is that convenience voting may not be as convenient for lower-turnout voters, who essentially decide overall turnout. Low-turnout voters probably aren’t thinking about how they’ll vote a month ahead of the election, when they’ll need to apply for an absentee ballot. Someone thinking about this is probably a high-turnout voter. Low-turnout voters might not even know until Election Day whom they’ll support. And that makes them less likely to take advantage of advance voting options like no-excuse early voting, which requires them to think about the election early and often: to submit an application, fill out a ballot and return it.As a result, convenience voting methods tend to reinforce the socioeconomic biases favoring high-turnout voters. The methods ensure that every high-interest voter has many opportunities to vote, without doing quite as much to draw less engaged voters to the polls.A final reason is that voting restrictions may backfire by angering and energizing Democratic voters. This law’s restrictions on handing out water in line, for instance, may do more to mobilize Democrats than to stop them from voting. One recent study even theorized that the Supreme Court’s decision to roll back elements of the Voting Rights Act didn’t reduce Black turnout because subsequent efforts to restrict voting were swiftly countered by efforts to mobilize Black voters.That doesn’t mean the Georgia law or other such laws are without consequence. Many make voting more difficult, enough to intimidate or discourage some voters. Many outright disenfranchise voters, even if only in small numbers. Perhaps the disenfranchisement of even a single voter merits outrage and opposition, especially if the law is passed on dubious or even fabricated grounds, and with Jim Crow mass disenfranchisement as a historical backdrop.But setting aside intent, it does mean that many such voting provisions, like that in Georgia, are unlikely to have a huge effect on turnout or Democratic chances.There are consequences to misunderstanding the stakes of changing voting laws. Minor changes in voting access can overshadow larger issues, including the kinds of potentially significant provisions in the Georgia law that empower the State Legislature. The democracy reform bill H.R. 1, for instance, would do quite a bit to expand voting access but relatively little to protect against partisan interference in election administration.The perception that voting laws have existential stakes for democracy or the political viability of the two parties has made bipartisan compromise extremely difficult. The virtue of bipartisanship is often and understandably dismissed as naïve, but voting laws are a rare case where bipartisanship has value of its own. Democracy, after all, depends on the consent of the loser. More