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      Texas Senate Advances Bill That Would Make Voting More Difficult

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      Lawmakers in Texas, a state that already claims the most onerous voting laws in the nation, on Thursday took a major step toward making it even tougher to cast a ballot, the latest in a bevy of Republican-backed efforts to restrict voting ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.The State Senate approved an overhaul of election law that would roll back many steps taken by counties last year to facilitate voting during the pandemic and impose new curbs in their place, including statewide limits on polling-place hours, a new formula for locating polling places and a ban on drop boxes that were widely used nationwide last year to assist mail-in voters.The proposal also would ban anyone except the voter who filled out a ballot from dropping it in a mailbox or delivering it to an election official. It adds new paperwork requirements for voters who need help because of language problems or disabilities. And it would give so-called poll watchers — untrained monitors, usually chosen by candidates or party officials, who are stationed inside polling places — the right to videotape voters if they deem them suspicious.The Texas measure comes on the heels of efforts in Iowa and Georgia, where lawmakers significantly tightened voting rules last month. The Georgia measure has been criticized by executives of several major companies with headquarters in the state. In Arizona, two Republican-backed bills that would erect roadblocks to voting by mail — the method used by eight in 10 voters — are approaching final votes in the State Legislature.American Airlines, which is based in Fort Worth, said in a statement on Thursday that it was “strongly opposed” to the bill that passed the Texas Senate “and others like it.” A similar bill moved through the Texas House’s elections committee on Thursday. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, made tougher voting laws a priority for the current legislative session after party leaders and some legislators embraced the baseless claim that a wave of fraudulent votes was responsible for President Biden’s election last fall. (Though President Donald J. Trump won Texas, drawing 52 percent of the vote.)Despite no evidence of significant election fraud in Texas last year, supporters of the bills in both chambers say those and other measures are necessary to make the state’s elections more secure.“This bill is designed to address areas throughout the process where bad actors can take advantage, so Texans can feel confident that their elections are fair, honest and open,” State Senator Bryan Hughes, a Republican from Mineola, about 100 miles east of Dallas, said during Senate debate on the measure.But David Becker, an expert on election administration who directs the Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, said the legislation ultimately would make voting less secure by encouraging voters who would normally vote by mail or in person during early voting periods to vote on Election Day. What little fraud exists can often be spotted by analyzing the ballots cast before Election Day, he said, while fraud or cyberattacks are harder to detect and address in the crush of a big Election Day turnout.Another provision would delay a statewide requirement to use auditable paper ballots until 2026, a move that would almost certainly make Texas the last state in the nation to carry out that basic security measure.Critics of the Senate bill said most of its provisions were less about making voting secure than about making it harder, particularly for urban voters and minority voters, two groups that tend to vote for Democrats.They called the clause allowing partisan monitors to videotape voters an invitation to intimidation, and noted that the voters most likely to be recorded — those with language problems who need assistance filling out a ballot — were disproportionately people of color.Similarly, they said, clauses limiting voting hours to 6 a.m. to. 9 p.m., banning drive-through voting and changing the formula for allotting polling places in counties with more than one million residents would apply largely to counties with big cities like Houston, which expanded its voting hours and allowed for drive-through balloting in November.The Senate bill was widely opposed by the state’s local election officials, including those in many of the biggest urban areas.Stephanie Gómez, the associate director of the advocacy group Common Cause Texas, said in a video conference with reporters that the two bills were “weaponizing legislation to codify widespread voter intimidation.”“If you want to know which state is going to be the next Georgia,” she said, “it’s Texas.” More

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      in US Politics

      Finally, Georgia companies speak out on voting law

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      Happy Thursday,As Georgia lawmakers debated significant new voting restrictions over the last month, many of the most powerful companies in the state stayed neutral. Now, nearly a week after governor Brian Kemp signed the measure, companies are pivoting and speaking out more forcefully on the measure.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterSeveral of the country’s leading Black executives penned a letter Wednesday urging the business community to protest more forcefully. “There is no middle ground here,” Kenneth Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, who led the effort, told the New York Times. Kenneth Frazier, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Merck, told the Times he only really started paying attention to the Georgia measure once it passed. “There seems to be no one speaking out,” he told the Times. “We thought if we spoke up, it might lead to a situation where others felt the responsibility to speak up.”Sure enough, other companies have started to criticize the measure.The first was Delta Airlines, one of several Georgia-based companies that has issued muted statements over the last few weeks as activists pressured them to take a stand. Ed Bastian, the company’s CEO, finally issued a clear rebuke of the measure on Wednesday. The law, Bastian wrote, was “unacceptable”.“After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill, coupled with discussions with leaders and employees in the Black community, it’s evident that the bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives. That is wrong,” he wrote.“The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 elections. This is simply not true,” he said.The comments reportedly infuriated Republicans in the Georgia legislature, who were considering punishing the airline, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Kemp said he was caught off guard by the statements.Republicans in the Georgia legislature made a last minute effort Wednesday to punish Delta for its opposition, advancing a measure that would strip a tax break for the airline. The measure ultimately failed, but Republicans made it clear they were sending a warning.“They like our public policy when we’re doing things that benefit them,” David Ralston, the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.“You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You got to keep that in mind sometimes.”James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, which like Delta had declined to publicly take a stance on the bill, also condemned it on Wednesday. “This legislation is unacceptable. It is a step backwards,” he told CNBC. “This legislation is wrong and needs to be remedied and we will continue to advocate for it both in private and now even more clearly in public.”Activists welcomed the statements from companies, but warned that words would not be enough. “We’re just getting started!” tweeted Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, one of the groups that has been pressuring businesses to take a stand. Now that the statements are (belatedly) more forceful, we need the words joined by more forceful actions. We have a few ideas for them….”Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, told the Guardian earlier this month that the companies have some of the most powerful lobbyists and believed powerful public statements during the legislative process could have killed the legislation. On Wednesday, Ufot urged the companies to speak up against voting restrictions pending in other states.“This is where the problem lies,” she said in a statement.” Conversations with Black and Brown leaders must happen at all stages and all areas of decision-making, not after the damage is done. Here’s the lesson: listen to Black and Brown people. Listen to young voters. Listen to new voters. We are the future, and our voices matter.”“Its too little, too late,” said Deborah Scott, the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, a civic action group that on Wednesday called for a boycott of Georgia over the law. “We’re glad they’re making these statements. We wish they would have made them 20 days ago, 10 days ago, before it was passed. I think the pressure activist groups are putting on them are making them say that. But they could have stopped it a long time ago had they made a statement.”Also worth watching…
      Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for mistakenly voting while ineligible in 2016, will get another chance to appeal her conviction, Texas’s highest criminal court announced Wednesday. Mason’s case attracted national outcry because of the severity of her conviction and because Mason was never told she couldn’t vote.
      Rita Hart, an Iowa Democrat, announced Wednesday that she was withdrawing her contest to a US House race she lost by just six votes to Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Her campaign claimed it had identified 22 ballots that went uncounted and was asking the US House to investigate and overturn the election. Republicans had rallied around Miller-Meeks, pointing to the fact that Hart declined to pursue her case in state court before asking Congress to step in. More

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      Delta and Coca-Cola pivot on Georgia’s restrictive voting law: 'It's unacceptable'

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterAfter weeks of pressure from activists some major companies and prominent Black executives are taking a somewhat harder line in speaking out against a new law in Georgia to restrict voting access.Delta Airlines, one of the Georgia-based companies that declined to speak out as the measure moved through the legislature, issued a forceful statement on Wednesday, saying the law was “unacceptable”.“After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill, coupled with discussions with leaders and employees in the Black community, it’s evident that the bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives. That is wrong.” Ed Bastian, Delta’s CEO, wrote in a company memo on Wednesday.“The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 elections. This is simply not true. Unfortunately, that excuse is being used in states across the nation that are attempting to pass similar legislation to restrict voting rights,” he added.The statement is an abrupt reversal for Delta, which for weeks declined to say it explicitly opposed the Georgia measure. Two weeks ago, when the measure was being crafted in the state legislature, a Delta spokesperson told the Guardian that “ensuring an election system that promotes broad voter participation, equal access to the polls, and fair, secure elections processes are critical to voter confidence and creates an environment that ensures everyone’s vote is counted”.Delta’s statement came just after some of America’s top Black business leaders and CEOs released a letter condemning widespread efforts across the United States to make it harder to vote. “There is no middle ground here,” Kenneth Chenault, the former CEO of American Express, told The New York Times, which first reported on the letter. “You either are for more people voting, or you want to suppress the vote.”James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, which has largely stayed quiet over the last few weeks, also pivoted his company’s stance on Wednesday.“This legislation is unacceptable. It is a step backwards,” he told CNBC. “This legislation is wrong and needs to be remedied and we will continue to advocate for it both in private and now even more clearly in public.”Asked why he took so long to issue a full-throated condemnation of the law, Quincey insisted the company has “always” opposed the legislation, even though it has declined to say that for weeks.The Georgia law requires voters to provide identification when they request and return absentee ballots, limits the availability of absentee drop boxes, reduces the length of runoff elections, allows for unlimited challenges to voter qualifications, and gives Republicans in the state legislature more influence over the state election board as well as a pathway to meddle with local boards. The law also makes it illegal to provide food or water to anyone standing in line to vote.Nse Ufot, the CEO of the New Georgia Project, one of the groups leading the pressure campaign, welcomed the statement from Delta, even though she said it was “late”.“This is where the problem lies. Conversations with Black and Brown leaders must happen at all stages and all areas of decision-making, not after the damage is done. Here’s the lesson: listen to Black and Brown people,” she said in a statement. She added that the company should now call out voting restrictions advancing through other state legislatures and support sweeping voting rights legislation in Congress.Deborah Scott, the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, another civic action group, called for a boycott of Georgia and Coca-Cola on Wednesday.“Although condemning Georgia’s anti-democratic moves is right and vocal support is welcome, the most effective response is one that will hit the pocketbooks of Georgia’s ruling elite – an economic boycott of the state,” she said in a statement. “This is a historic opportunity, comparable to other watershed civil rights moments such as the Montgomery bus boycott and Selma.”While Delta insisted it worked behind the scenes to remove some of the most onerous restrictions in the measure, the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, said he was surprised by the company’s stance.“Today’s statement by Delta CEO Ed Bastian stands in stark contrast to our conversations with the company, ignores the content of the new law, and unfortunately continues to spread the same false attacks being repeated by partisan activists,” Kemp said, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Since 2018, Delta has donated more than 41,600 to lawmakers who backed voting restrictions, according to Popular Information, an independent newsletter.A senior Republican also told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that lawmakers were weighing ways to punish the company after a statement that was “akin to Delta shooting us in the face with a shotgun without telling us it was coming.”The chatter among Republicans about retaliating is growing. Rs are amazed Delta didn’t wait until tomorrow – when leg session is over – to issue this statement. “This is the level of anger that makes people creative,” says one. “That should scare the shit out of them.” #gapol— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) March 31, 2021
      Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons football team also released a statement on Tuesday condemning the new law.“Every voice and every vote matters and should be heard through our democratic process in Georgia. The right to vote is simply sacred. We should be working to make voting easier, not harder for every eligible citizen,” Blank said in a statement on Tuesday. Spokespeople for both the Atlanta Braves and Hawks, the city’s baseball and basketball teams respectively, declined to comment on the measure on Tuesday.Corporations have signaled a willingness to speak out on controversial issues in recent years, from LGBTQ+ rights to the environment. But observers in recent weeks have questioned why companies have not brought the same force to opposing voting rights in Georgia.“They are looking at their best business interests, and when the pressure from one side increases, they essentially realize ‘hey look there’s a side where I need to weigh in and at this point I need to step up and make my opinion clear,’” said Tarun Kushwaha, a marketing professor at George Mason University. “My hunch is that the Georgia, Atlanta, based organizations were slow at doing this is they feared that there might be repercussions for them. Repercussions not just in terms of customers, but repercussions from the legislature.”Beyond Delta, activists have also singled out Coca-Cola, UPS, Home Depot, Aflac, and Southern Company to oppose the measure. Last week, leaders of the sixth district of the AME church, representing more than 500 Black churches in Georgia, went even further and called for a Coca-Cola boycott.There have also been growing calls for sports officials to sanction Georgia over the law. The president of the Major League Baseball players’ union indicated he was open to discussion about moving the league’s All Star Game from Atlanta this summer. The National Black Justice Coalition has also called on the PGA Tour to move the Master’s golf tournament out of Georgia. More

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      A Conversation With Senator Raphael Warnock

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      Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherRepublican-led legislatures are racing to restrict voting rights, in a broad political effort that began in the state of Georgia. To many Democrats, it’s no coincidence that Georgia — once a Republican stronghold — has just elected its first Black senator: Raphael Warnock. Today, we speak to the senator about his path from pastorship to politics, the fight over voting rights and his faith that the old political order is fading away.On today’s episodeAstead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times.Mr. Warnock was previously a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.Getty ImagesBackground readingGeorgia Republicans passed a sweeping law to restrict voting access in the state, making it the first major battleground to overhaul its election system since the turmoil of the 2020 presidential contest.Last year, Mr. Warnock ran for office in a state where people in predominantly Black neighborhoods waited in disproportionately long lines. Several Black leaders have said Georgia’s new law clearly puts a target on Black and brown voters.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Astead W. Herndon contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Theo Balcomb, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Hans Buetow, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Bianca Giaever, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Alix Spiegel, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano and Soraya Shockley.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Laura Kim, Erica Futterman and Shreeya Sinha. More

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      in Elections

      The Painful History of the Georgia Voting Law

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      Republicans today know that blocking access to the ballot has always relied on legal maneuvering and political schemes.Seventy-five years ago this July, a World War II veteran named Maceo Snipes reportedly became the first Black man to cast a ballot in his rural Georgia county. The next day, a white man shot him in his front yard, and Mr. Snipes would soon afterward die from those wounds.Fortunately, three generations removed from the political reign of terror that claimed Mr. Snipes’s life, voter suppression seems much less likely to arrive by bullet. But we may not be as distant in our political moment from theirs as we might think: The long struggle to block access to the ballot has always relied on legal maneuvering and political schemes to achieve what bullets and bombs alone could not.What legislators in Georgia and across the country have reminded us is that backlash to expanded voting rights has often arrived by a method that our eras share in common: by laws, like Georgia’s Senate Bill 202, passed by elected politicians.Opponents of the new Georgia law denounce the legislation as “Jim Crow 2.0” precisely because they recognize the continuities between past and present. The bill’s most ardent supporters, who lined up in front of a painting of a building on the site of an antebellum plantation to watch Gov. Brian Kemp sign it into law, seem less interested in distancing themselves from that past and more eager for Americans to forget it.“Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John Roberts explained in 2013 in defending the Supreme Court’s gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, a decision that helped clear the way for the current voter suppression campaigns. Yet the riot at the U.S. Capitol makes clear that concerted efforts to sow seeds of distrust in the democratic process can still stoke violent reaction.The methods in the fight against voting rights have a common objective — an electorate narrowed along predictable and demonstrable fault lines. Many present-day proponents of voting restrictions are quick to distance themselves from the racist aims and attitudes of their forebears, but the most durable and enduring attacks on voting rights have long cloaked their goals in race-neutral language — at least in writing.Historians like Carol Anderson demonstrate that attempts to limit ballot access have followed in the wake of mass political mobilization and in response to federal efforts to protect or expand voting rights. At the time Mr. Snipes was killed, the U.S. Supreme Court had recently invalidated the white primary, a disenfranchisement tactic that locked Black voters out of the only election that really mattered because of one-party rule in the “Solid South.” The N.A.A.C.P., which grew from 50,000 to approximately half a million members during World War II, spearheaded the legal challenge to the white primary and grass-roots voter registration drives across the South. Anticipating that Black voters would flood the polls in 1946, Eugene Talmadge, the ex-governor running for the office again, mobilized supporters to ward off threats from local activists and federal action alike.Mr. Talmadge egged on supporters who intimidated and attacked Black voters, but his most enduring and effective tactics look much more like present-day voter suppression tactics. As the Emory researcher Hannah Charak has documented, Mr. Talmadge quietly collaborated with sympathetic local officials on illegal registration purges and blanketed the state with “challenge forms” that white residents could use to dispute Black votes.Voter suppression tactics like literacy tests and Georgia’s infamous county unit system delivered racist leadership like Mr. Talmadge (and his son) while withstanding legal challenges and Supreme Court rulings for decades in part because such measures commonly avoided mention of race.If we remember Georgia’s extremist enemies of democracy for the violence they inspired, then today’s advocates of voter suppression may well expect history to reflect favorably on their relative restraint. Yet even as many supporters of Georgia’s new voting restrictions seek to distance themselves from the violence at the Capitol, they invoke unproven claims of voter fraud and the passions they provoke as a pretext for their legislative actions — political cover for those who claim the high ground of “electoral reform.”Georgia is now a far cry from the one-party politics of Jim Crow, and its increasingly diverse population challenges the power of the overwhelmingly white and disproportionately rural ruling class that has held sway for nearly all of the state’s history — thanks in large part to an unending stream of voter suppression schemes.The ruling logic that drives those efforts, spanning generations and a dramatic shift in party affiliation, is the conviction that America would be better off if fewer Americans voted. Perhaps it is time not only to focus on those who say the quiet parts out loud but to remember that the quiet parts have been there all along.Jason Morgan Ward, a professor of history at Emory University, is the author of “Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics, 1936-1965” and, most recently, “Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      A National Campaign to Restrict Voting

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      Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn the weeks after the 2020 election, Georgia’s Republican leaders emerged as defenders of election integrity, rebuffing demands by former President Trump to overturn the results. But now voting rights in the state are under threat. The Republicans in the state legislature watched as the state flipped for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in decades and two Democrats — Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock — won their Senate runoff elections. Their response was a package of voting restrictions. Today, we look at the measures introduced in Georgia and how similar laws may be passed elsewhere in the country. On today’s episodeNick Corasaniti, a domestic correspondent covering national politics for The New York Times. Three Democratic state representatives, Kim Schofield, second from left, Viola Davis and Sandra Scott, at a protest outside the Georgia Capitol as House members debated a bill on voting restrictions last week.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBackground reading Georgia Republicans have moved early in a campaign to rewrite voting rules. Republicans in other states are determined to follow them.The country’s most hotly contested state has calmed down after months of drama, court fights and national attention. But new storms are on the horizon.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Theo Balcomb, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Hans Buetow, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Bianca Giaever, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Alix Spiegel, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano and Soraya Shockley.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Mikayla Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Laura Kim, Erica Futterman and Shreeya Sinha. More

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      in US Politics

      Warnock urges Biden to prioritize fight against voter suppression

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterThe Georgia Democratic senator the Rev Raphael Warnock delivered a challenge to Joe Biden on Sunday to prioritize the fight against voter suppression, telling the US president: “We have to pass voting rights no matter what.”Controversial legislation introducing sweeping new restrictions on voting was signed into law by Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, last week, the spearhead of an apparent effort by Republicans in dozens of states to dramatically curtail access to the electoral process for Black and other minority voters, who lean Democrat.The president has slammed Georgia’s move as “un-American” and “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” a reference to laws enforcing racial segregation following the civil war.But some supporters are worried that his fledgling administration appears more concerned about passing a $3tn economic package focused on infrastructure than tackling what Warnock calls “an assault on democracy”.“We’ve got to work on the infrastructure of our country, our roads and our bridges, and we’ve got to work on the infrastructure of our democracy,” Warnock told CNN’s State of the Union.Two pieces of proposed legislation currently before Congress would counter the Republicans’ voter suppression strategy.The John Lewis Voting Rights Act that Warnock addressed in his first speech on the Senate floor in January would allow courts to block new election legislation by states perceived to violate federal law and impose greater federal oversight on the electoral process.The second, the For the People Act that has already passed the House, would require states to provide at least 15 days of early voting, allow universal access to mail-in voting, permit election day voter registration and create a national holiday for voting.Both bills face an uncertain fate in the US Senate, which has created a furious debate over whether Democrats should remove the filibuster and eliminate the 60-vote requirement for passage.Biden on Sunday urged Congress to pass the two bills, tweeting: “We need to make it easier for all eligible Americans to access the ballot box and prevent attacks on the sacred right to vote.”I urge Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. We need to make it easier for all eligible Americans to access the ballot box and prevent attacks on the sacred right to vote.— President Biden (@POTUS) March 28, 2021
      The backlash in Georgia was immediate to Kemp’s Thursday afternoon signing of the legislation that imposes stricter ID voter requirements, limits the availability of ballot drop boxes and shortens the time for voters to request and return mail-in ballots.A Black Democratic state assembly member, Park Cannon, was arrested by Georgia state troopers for knocking on Kemp’s locked door while the signing took place in private. Demonstrators took to the streets of Atlanta on Saturday to support Park.Meanwhile, the editorial board of the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper accused state leaders of “marching backward into history”.“People … will see these voting access restrictions for what they really are: a house built hurriedly on shifting sands of lies. Verifiable facts or statistics are not part of the foundation for the unwarranted package of changes rapidly signed into law Thursday behind closed doors,” the editorial stated, referring to Donald Trump’s false allegations of fraud in the presidential election in Georgia.Nikema Williams, a Black newly elected US congresswoman for Georgia, told CNN on Sunday she believed that the victories of the state’s new Democratic US senators, Warnock and Jon Ossoff, following Biden’s November defeat of Trump in a traditionally red state, had fueled a desire for revenge.“Republicans are pushing back and they’re upset that we were able to win,” she said. “And so they’re going to do everything in their power right now to restrict access to people who mainly look like me from voting.”Kemp incurred the former president’s wrath in December for failing to support his lies about a stolen election, but has since stated he would back Trump for another White House run in 2024.Kemp sparked outrage last week by signing the new state legislation in front of a painting of a slavery-era plantation building, and surrounded only by white men.“I gasped,” Kimberley Wallace, whose family members labored at the plantation for generations, dating back to sharecropping and slavery, told CNN. She said the moment was “very rude and very disrespectful to me, to my family, to Black people of Georgia”. More