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      Why Kentucky Just Became the Only Red State to Expand Voting Rights

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      At a time when states with Republican-led legislatures are rushing to restrict ballot access, Kentucky proved the exception to the rule. The reasons are both political and logistical.Jennifer Decker has solid conservative credentials. A first-term Republican state lawmaker in Kentucky who used to work for Senator Rand Paul, she represents a county that voted for Donald J. Trump last year by nearly 30 percentage points.Yet at a time when many of her Republican counterparts around the country are racing to pass stringent new restrictions on voting — fueled in part by Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election — Ms. Decker’s first major bill swerved.It aimed to make it easier for people to vote in the state.Kentucky on Wednesday became the only state in the country with a Republican-controlled legislature to expand voting rights after a bitter presidential election that tested the country’s democratic institutions and elevated ballot access as an animating issue for both parties.In a signing ceremony on Wednesday, Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, hailed the bill as a bipartisan effort that cut against the push in other Republican legislatures to put up barriers to voting.“When much of the country has put in more restrictive laws, Kentucky legislators, Kentucky leaders were able to come together to stand up for democracy and to expand the opportunity for people to vote,” Mr. Beshear said.The law in Kentucky establishes three days of early voting in the state; introduces voting centers that would allow for more in-person balloting options; creates an online portal to register and request ballots; and allows voters to fix problems with absentee ballots, a process known as curing.The reasons that Kentucky Republicans have diverged on voting rights range from the political to the logistical. For one, they had an easier sell: With sweeping new rules allowing the election to be held safely during the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans in Kentucky had one of their best cycles in years, with both Senator Mitch McConnell and Mr. Trump easily winning in the state.And expanding voting access in Kentucky was a low bar to clear; the state had some of the tightest voting laws in the country before 2020, with not a single day of early voting, and strict limits on absentee balloting.The push in Kentucky and other states — including the Democratic-controlled Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii and Massachusetts — reflects an odd outcome of the pandemic: The most challenging election in nearly a century brought about expansive changes across the country to ease access to the ballot box.“We did things a little bit differently because of Covid, and I just thought that some of that might help us going forward,” Ms. Decker said in an interview. “And election reform should not be partisan. Partisan majorities can change at any time.”Republicans and Democrats alike in Kentucky have overwhelmingly supported and celebrated the bill, heralding it as a welcome bipartisan achievement. But voting rights advocates have been more muted, pointing to the legislation’s relatively limited scope and its mixture of measures, like the introduction of a short early voting period, as well as new restrictions heralded under the banner of election security. They caution that the proposal represents a modest improvement in a state long hostile to voting rights — a fact even conservatives have acknowledged.“Kentucky actually had probably, until this point, the most restrictive laws in the country on voting,” said Michael Adams, the Republican secretary of state, who was the leading force behind the bill. “And that’s what we’re trying to change.”Michael Adams, the Republican secretary of state of Kentucky, led the push to pass the voting bill. Jon Cherry for The New York TimesIndeed, even with its newly expanded voting access, Kentucky’s voting rules remain comparatively stricter than those of Georgia, which recently overhauled its electoral system with new restrictions on voting. Even under Georgia’s new law, for example, the state still has no-excuse absentee voting and a much longer earlier voting period than Kentucky.Voting rights experts note that three days of early voting is still a short window compared with other states that offer the process, and that the law does not have a provision for no-excuse absentee voting. It also includes restrictions like the banning of ballot collection, a practice in which one person gathers and drops off multiple voters’ ballots.Nearly all of the country’s current efforts to expand voting access are unfolding in states with Democratic-led legislatures, and they go much further in expanding access to the ballot than Kentucky’s law does.Connecticut is trying to make no-excuse absentee voting permanent after the method worked successfully in last year’s election, and Delaware is working on a constitutional amendment to add no-excuse absentee voting. Hawaii is progressing toward the introduction of automatic voter registration. And Massachusetts is seeking a host of changes, including adding same-day voter registration and extending early voting.“The election in 2020 helps give them confidence that they could act quickly in expanding access and not have to go slowly,” Sylvia Albert, the director of the voting rights group Common Cause, said of these states.She said that Kentucky did not fall into the category of true expansion, because its new law will provide fewer options than the emergency orders of 2020. “This might be a political calculation made by Democrats in the state, so that Republicans don’t go even further in suppressing the vote like other states have,” she said. “But as an election, voter access bill, it is not successful.”While Kentucky’s compromise — expanding voting access while enacting some more restrictive policies in the name of election security — could serve as a model for other Republican-controlled states, it is more likely to be a blip in a year of G.O.P.-led pushes for voting restrictions.Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky at the State Capitol in Frankfort.Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader, via Associated PressIndeed, it was a unique set of circumstances and an unlikely coalition in Kentucky that led to the state’s first steps in a generation to expand voting access.Fresh off a successful free, fair and safe election conducted with a host of temporary policies during the pandemic, Mr. Adams began the dutiful task of surveying county election administrators about the new rules. He had expected complaints, but instead found strong support for some of the measures, particularly the multiple days of early voting.So Mr. Adams went to the Republican leadership in the Legislature to gauge its interest in adopting some of the policies. After a 2020 election in which Republicans picked up seats in the State Legislature and Mr. McConnell cruised to an easy victory, G.O.P. leaders in Kentucky had a far different political calculus than Republicans in Georgia, who saw their state turn blue for the first time in a generation. They were open, they said, though not necessarily eager to shake things up.“The hard part at first was finding a sponsor,” Mr. Adams said, “because this was seen as so unlikely that no one wanted to be the sponsor.”Enter Mr. Paul. The junior senator from Kentucky, who is up for re-election next year and has repeatedly made false statements about the 2020 election, had reached out to Mr. Adams with some concerns of his own regarding Kentucky election law. But he soon came around to the idea of a compromise effort, expanding some points of access while restricting others.And he had an idea for a sponsor: Ms. Decker, who had been interested in an election overhaul after the high turnout in last year’s vote.“I’ve been a lifelong Republican, I was chairman of the Republican Party in my county for a long time, and I’ve never felt like voter turnout was anything but good,” Ms. Decker said.The bill quickly began gaining momentum in the Legislature. And Democrats, who eyed the effort warily, would soon come on board.“We saw a bill come forward this year, and you’ve got to recognize some political realities of Kentucky,” said Morgan McGarvey, the Democratic minority leader in the State Senate. “This bill does not do everything that I would like to see in an election reform law, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.”For years, Democrats in the State Legislature had worked to expand voting in Kentucky, both by putting forward large, transformative bills that never had a chance of passing, and pared down efforts like simply seeking to keep polls open until 8 p.m. (Kentucky currently closes polls at 6 p.m. on Election Day, the earliest shuttering time in the country along with Indiana’s.) The party was consistently rebuffed by the State Senate, which has been controlled by Republicans since 1999.“No one can argue: This expands voting options in Kentucky,” Mr. McGarvey said. “Every Kentuckian has more choices of when and how to vote than they did before this law. So that’s something we have been fighting for for years, and I’m not going to slow it up.”Republicans have been quick to praise the bill. Mr. Paul said in a statement that he was “proud” of the effort, and that it would ensure “our elections are accurate and accessible.” The Honest Elections Project, a conservative group that has joined legal efforts seeking to roll back voting access, said the bill had found “a balance” on “the need for both access and security.”Joshua Douglas, a professor of election law at the University of Kentucky who was part of a small team of county election officials and other experts who consulted with Mr. Adams on the initial effort, said that “it’s not the bill I would have written by any means.”He added: “But it has a lot of stuff I like and not a ton I hate.” More

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      Boehner Blasts Trump, Saying He ‘Incited That Bloody Insurrection’

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      In his new book, John Boehner, the Republican former House speaker, sharply rebukes the former president for his role in the “mob violence” at the Capitol on Jan. 6.John Boehner, the Republican former House speaker, issues a stinging denunciation in his new book of Donald J. Trump, saying that the former president “incited that bloody insurrection” by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and that the Republican Party has been taken over by “whack jobs.”The criticism from Mr. Boehner in his book, “On the House: A Washington Memoir,” represents an extraordinary public rebuke by a former speaker of the House toward a former president from his own party and shows how much the Republican Party has shifted since Mr. Boehner left Congress in 2015. And his remarks came as Mr. Trump has sought to retain his grip on Republican lawmakers’ loyalty from his new political base in South Florida.The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, sharply criticized Mr. Trump at the end of the Senate trial for the former president’s second impeachment, pointing to his role in the Capitol riot. Others, like Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 in the House Republican leadership, have also excoriated him.But Mr. Boehner’s remarks went a step further, serving as a rejection of what the party he once helped lead has morphed into over the last several years. While he has criticized Mr. Trump in the past, it’s his comments about the events of Jan. 6 that have the most resonance.In the book, an excerpt from which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Boehner writes that Mr. Trump’s “refusal to accept the result of the election not only cost Republicans the Senate but led to mob violence,” adding, “It was painful to watch.”At another point, he writes, “I’ll admit I wasn’t prepared for what came after the election — Trump refusing to accept the results and stoking the flames of conspiracy that turned into violence in the seat of our democracy, the building over which I once presided.”Former President Donald J. Trump speaking at a rally in front of the White House on Jan. 6 shortly before his supporters stormed the Capitol.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesHe adds: “Watching it was scary, and sad. It should have been a wake-up call for a return to Republican sanity.” Nodding to the divisions between the parties in Congress now, he writes, “Whatever they end up doing, or not doing, none of it will compare to one of the lowest points of American democracy that we lived through in January 2021.”Mr. Trump, he goes on, “incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bullshit he’d been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November.” Mr. Boehner writes, “He claimed voter fraud without any evidence, and repeated those claims, taking advantage of the trust placed in him by his supporters and ultimately betraying that trust.”In an emailed statement, Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, called Mr. Boehner a “Swamp Creature” and accused him of favoring “Communist China” (The former speaker’s lobbying firm represents the Chinese Embassy in the United States). In a separate email to The Times, Mr. Trump asked of Mr. Boehner, whose love of merlot wine is legendary in Washington: “Was he drinking when he made this statement? Just another RINO who couldn’t do the job!”The former president has continued to make wild and false claims about widespread voter fraud in the election, despite multiple court rulings against him and the certification of President Biden’s victory.Of members of the House and the Senate who supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results, Mr. Boehner writes: “Some of the people involved did not surprise me in the least. The legislative terrorism that I’d witnessed as speaker had now encouraged actual terrorism.”Mr. Boehner, whose tenure in the House Republican leadership coincided with the congressional obstruction of the Obama years and who was subsumed by the rise of the Tea Party and House members who were rewarded by conservative media appearances, writes that the G.O.P. must “take back control from the faction that had grown to include everyone from garden-variety whack jobs to insurrectionists.”For now, Mr. Trump has retained support among Republican voters. A slim majority would like to see him as the party’s nominee again if he runs in 2024, something he has told advisers he’s serious about considering. And some House G.O.P. officials are deeply concerned about keeping him on their side in their efforts to retake control in the midterm elections next year. More

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      The Fear That Is Shaping American Politics

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      It affects everyone from Joe Manchin to Joe Biden.Why is the Republican Party so determined to constrain the franchise?One answer is provided by the changing demographics of the children in the nation’s public schools, a leading indicator of shifts in the racial and ethnic makeup of the country.According to the National Center for Education Statistics,The percentage of public school students who were white was 64.8 percent in 1995, and this percentage dropped below 50 percent in 2014 (to 49.5 percent). N.C.E.S. projects that in 2029, White students will make up 43.8 percent of public school enrollment.The changing racial and ethnic makeup of the schools, something visible to parents and to anyone who walks by at recess, is a leading indicator of the day (in roughly 2045) when non-Hispanic whites of all ages will drop under 50 percent of the U.S. population, soon to be followed by the day when whites become a minority of the electorate (although that will depend on how voters self-identify — among other things, data suggests that many mixed race Americans identify as white).Hispanics and Asian-Americans are driving the ascendance of America’s minority population, while the Black share of the population will increase by a small amount. Pew Research estimates that over the 50 year period from 2015 to 2065, the non-Hispanic white share of the population — as defined by the U.S. census — will drop from 62 to 46 percent, while the Hispanic share will grow from 18 to 24 percent and the Asian-American share from 6 to 14 percent. The Black share will go from 12 to 13 percent.Richard Alba, a sociologist at the City University of New York, and other experts have argued that predictions of a white minority in a little over 20 years have created a false narrative because it fails to account for the numerous second- and third-generation children of interethnic and interracial marriages, many of whom see themselves (and are seen by others) as white.False or not, the white minority prediction has become a dominant political narrative — particularly insofar as Republicans exploit this characterization — and in the process this framing has become a central element in the worldview of many conservative whites.How does the expectation of a majority-minority America affect the thinking of white Americans?Maureen Craig at N.Y.U. and Jennifer Richeson, at Yale, reported in their 2018 paper “Majority No More? The Influence of Neighborhood Racial Diversity and Salient National Population Changes on Whites’ Perceptions of Racial Discrimination” thatWhite Americans considering a future in which the white population has declined to less than 50 percent of the national population are more likely to perceive that the societal status of their racial group — in terms of resources or as the “prototypical” American — is under threat, which in turn leads to stronger identification as white, the expression of more negative racial attitudes and emotions, greater opposition to diversity, and greater endorsement of conservative political ideology, political parties, and candidates.Biden, more than either of his three Democratic predecessors — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — is putting this white reaction to the test.Not only is Biden actively supporting voting rights reform designed to protect and strengthen Black and Hispanic political participation, but he has taken assertive stands on racial issues, both in terms of appointments and in supporting racially targeted provisions in his stimulus and infrastructure legislation.The question for Biden is whether a Democrat can firm up the party’s multiracial coalition with a double-edged strategy. First, winning over enough working class whites by disbursing substantial benefits in his stimulus and infrastructure legislation; and, second, by targeting generous programs to racial and ethnic minorities to reduce disparities in income and education.The underlying question is whether more white voters will turn against Biden in the 2022 midterm elections as they turned against Clinton in 1994 and Obama in 2010.A large number of white people already believe that they suffer higher levels of discrimination than Black people and other minorities do.Craig and Richeson write:Organizational messages that are favorable to racial diversity have also been found to enhance the sense among whites of personal and group discrimination against them compared with race-neutral messages.In addition, many Republican and conservative-leaning whites are convinced that as minorities become more powerful, the left coalition will become increasingly antagonistic to them. Craig and Richeson write:This research suggests, in other words, that whites are likely to perceive more antiwhite discrimination under circumstances in which they perceive that their group’s position in society is under threat.Nour Sami Kteily, a professor of management and organizations at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, emailed to say that he and Richeson have been conducting a study that asks whites how much they agree (7) or disagree (1) with statements like:If Black Americans got to the top of the social hierarchy, they would want to stay on top and keep other groups down.andIf Black Americans got to the top of the social hierarchy, they would put all of their effort toward creating a more egalitarian social system for all groups.On average, whites fell at the midpoint but, Kteily wrote, there waslarge variation associated with being Republican vs. Democrat, with Republicans being more likely to believe that Black Americans would use power to dominate. The difference is highly statistically significant.In a December 2019 article, “Demographic change, political backlash, and challenges in the study of geography,” Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, wrote:The relationship between diversity and reactionary politics should be considered one of the most important sociopolitical issues facing the world today — it is a near certainty that almost every developed country and many developing countries will be more diverse a generation from now than they are today.Thus, Enos continued,if increasing diversity affects political outcomes, the relationship can point in two consequentially different directions: toward increased diversity liberalizing politics or toward increased diversity causing a reactionary backlash.The 2020 election of Biden combined with Democratic control of the House and Senate have contained, at least momentarily, the reactionary backlash, but a liberalized politics has not yet been secured. What are the prospects for Democrats seeking to maintain, if not strengthen, their fragile hold on power? More

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      in World Politics

      Obstructing Governance as a Substitute for Public Policy

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      It is hard to figure out why it seems so difficult to be a white guy in today’s America, even though I am a white guy and should be able to figure it out. The problem seems to be that there are just too many people in America who are not white guys, or even white guys and gals combined. Whenever this feeling seems to overwhelm some white guys, their solution to the perceived problem is to try to preclude something that non-white guys want: entry into the country, voting rights, equal opportunity, racial justice, access to meaningful health care and, way too often, the simple desire to live in peace or continue to live at all.

      So, now that the mass shootings have started again in earnest in America after seemingly taking a small break during the height of pandemic restrictions, it is again mostly white guys out front depriving lots of others of their lives and sense of security. Of course, who can forget the hordes of white guys storming the US Capitol a few months ago trying to prevent their fearless leader from the perceived insult of a permanent return to his beloved mansion in Florida.

      Escaping Thucydides’ Trap: Keeping the Peace Between Rising and Reigning Powers

      READ MORE

      It is worth asking who these white guys are who continue to board their trains to nowhere, callously leaving misery, destruction and even death in their wake. Some are among the really challenged people in America. Among other things, they seem to be intellectually incapable of seeing the connection between incredibly easy access to firearms and mass human slaughter in the American landscape. Find an assault weapon, and you are likely to find a challenged white guy.

      However, those white guys fueling the nation’s resistance to humane immigration policies, to easy access to the polls to affect democratic change, to a racial reckoning and equal opportunity, to universal access to meaningful health care, and even to a comprehensive public health response to the pandemic are all on the same trains to nowhere, along with their gun nut buddies. Tragically, they enable America to fail and they empower each other to add critical mass to their efforts.

      Many of these white people live in neighborhoods with a lot of other white people, only some of whom share their views. Some live in more diverse neighborhoods or pockets of poverty where they often hide their views until, for some reason, they have had enough of “others” and snap. But a whole bunch of these white people were among the 74 million people who voted for Trump in the last election.

      Thwarting Efforts to Govern

      Worse yet, they and their Republican cohorts are now determined to thwart any Biden administration effort to govern. Governing is not the same thing as being a government. Governing is, in its most basic sense, the exercise of authority thru the making of policy and the administration of that policy. President Joe Biden often has the authority to act, but to exercise that authority within America’s constitutional framework requires collaboration with, and the cooperation of, other institutional elements of that framework.

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      Take immigration policy as an example, since there is often talk of “comprehensive immigration reform.” The Biden administration can determine policy and administer elements of that policy through executive action. It can humanely allow Latino children to enter the United States and then make sure that they have a bed, a blanket and enough food to sustain them. After that, figuring out how these immigrant minors should be processed and treated becomes much more complicated, unless it is viewed as a component of a much larger US immigration problem that requires “comprehensive reform.”

      Enter Congress, enter the Republicans in Congress, enter the white guys on the trains to nowhere and that comprehensive reform is almost certainly doomed. So, what happens to the children? With some luck, they disappear into the fabric of the world of undocumented immigrants striving to find a place in a nation where a lot of white guys don’t want them to be.

      Although the immigration example is bad enough, there is more bad news from the white guys on the trains to nowhere. They don’t seem to want anybody but themselves to have a go at voting. It would be nice to say that this effort will fail in that exceptional “model democracy” known as America. But hold on, the white guys have a plan: You change the voting rules to get better results. This is easier than changing the policies, programs and personalities that many of the voters rejected under the old rules.

      Just to make sure that nobody mistook the latest white guy effort at voter suppression for a serious effort to make voting easier, those wacky Republicans in the Georgia legislature, aided and abetted by the Republican governor, just criminalized providing food and water to their fellow citizens waiting in voting lines. That is, of course, only part of what they did, but enough to fully demonstrate the lengths to which the white guys on the trains to nowhere will go to preserve their shrinking political influence.

      You see, prior voting practices in Georgia often left voters of color waiting in longer lines than their white counterparts, so instead of legislating to reduce wait times for everybody, someone came up with the bright idea of making it harder to wait in line. (This plan will work even better if the white guys also make it a crime to sell those little cooler bags to anyone who isn’t a white guy.)

      The Key That Unlocks the Door

      I wish I were making this up, but I am not. The Biden administration’s capacity to govern is being challenged not by people who have a sincere agenda of constructive reform for the nation, but by those same kind of white guys on their trains to nowhere who have just criminalized giving grandma a drink of water while she waits in line to vote.

      Even some things as potentially lifesaving for white guys as wearing masks and seeking COVID-19 vaccines seem challenging to way too many of them. While they should overwhelmingly embrace these measures if for no other reason than if only people of color get vaccinated and white guys die off, their situation gets even more desperate. Yet the world has watched while many white guys on their trains to nowhere have overtly contributed to tens of thousands of COVID deaths in the US and continue to try to thwart coordinated government efforts to address the nation’s pandemic and public health crisis.

      For some reason, even their significant contribution to the deaths of so many has failed to pause the white guys on their trains to nowhere long enough to stand back so that those of good will in government have the space they need to function and the support they need to govern.

      For as long as the mindless obstruction continues, the nation’s governmental institutions will be significantly impeded from pursuing the long-delayed promise of a more just and equitable America. And it will be that much harder to demonstrate that good government is the key that unlocks the door.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations

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      Online donors were guided into weekly recurring contributions. Demands for refunds spiked. Complaints to banks and credit card companies soared. But the money helped keep Donald Trump’s struggling campaign afloat.Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500.It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Mr. Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell, for help.What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud.“It felt,” Russell said, “like it was a scam.”But what the Blatts believed was duplicity was actually an intentional scheme to boost revenues by the Trump campaign and the for-profit company that processed its online donations, WinRed. Facing a cash crunch and getting badly outspent by the Democrats, the campaign had begun last September to set up recurring donations by default for online donors, for every week until the election.Contributors had to wade through a fine-print disclaimer and manually uncheck a box to opt out.As the election neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.“Bandits!” said Victor Amelino, a 78-year-old Californian, who made a $990 online donation to Mr. Trump in early September via WinRed. It recurred seven more times — adding up to almost $8,000. “I’m retired. I can’t afford to pay all that damn money.”The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final two and a half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. All campaigns make refunds for various reasons, including to people who give more than the legal limit. But the sum the Trump operation refunded dwarfed that of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.The recurring donations swelled Mr. Trump’s treasury in September and October, just as his finances were deteriorating. He was then able to use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.In effect, the money that Mr. Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.Russell Blatt’s brother, Stacy, who was a supporter of Mr. Trump, died of cancer in February. Katie Currid for The New York TimesMarketers have long used ruses like prechecked boxes to steer American consumers into unwanted purchases, like magazine subscriptions. But consumer advocates said deploying the practice on voters in the heat of a presidential campaign — at such volume and with withdrawals every week — had much more serious ramifications.“It’s unfair, it’s unethical and it’s inappropriate,” said Ira Rheingold, the executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.Harry Brignull, a user-experience designer in London who coined the term “dark patterns” for manipulative digital marketing practices, said the Trump team’s techniques were a classic of the “deceptive design” genre.“It should be in textbooks of what you shouldn’t do,” he said.Political strategists, digital operatives and campaign finance experts said they could not recall ever seeing refunds at such a scale. Mr. Trump, the R.N.C. and their shared accounts refunded far more money to online donors in the last election cycle than every federal Democratic candidate and committee in the country combined.Over all, the Trump operation refunded 10.7 percent of the money it raised on WinRed in 2020; the Biden operation’s refund rate on ActBlue, the parallel Democratic online donation-processing platform, was 2.2 percent, federal records show.How Refunds to Trump Donors Soared in 2020Refunds are shown as the percentage of money received by each operation to date via WinRed and ActBlue. More

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      in Elections

      One Republican’s Lonely Fight Against a Flood of Disinformation

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      After losing an ugly congressional race last year, Denver Riggleman is leading a charge against the conspiracy-mongering coursing through his party. He doesn’t have many allies.AFTON, Va. — Denver Riggleman stood virtually alone.It was Oct. 2, on the floor of the House of Representatives, and he rose as one of only two Republicans in the chamber to speak in favor of a resolution denouncing QAnon. Mr. Riggleman, a freshman congressman from Virginia, had his own personal experiences with fringe ideas, both as a target of them and as a curious observer of the power they hold over true believers. He saw a dangerous movement becoming more intertwined with his party, and worried that it was only growing thanks to words of encouragement from President Donald J. Trump.“Will we stand up and condemn a dangerous, dehumanizing and convoluted conspiracy theory that the F.B.I. has assessed with high confidence is very likely to motivate some domestic extremists?” asked Mr. Riggleman, a former Air Force intelligence officer. “We should not be playing with fire.”Six months later, conspiracy theories like QAnon remain a threat that most Republicans would rather ignore than confront, and Mr. Riggleman is out of office. But he is ever more determined to try to expose disinformation from the far right that is swaying legions in the Republican base to believe in a false reality.Mr. Riggleman is a living example of the political price of falling out of lock step with the hard right. He lost a G.O.P. primary race last June after he officiated at the wedding of a gay couple. And once he started calling out QAnon, whose followers believe that a satanic network of child molesters runs the Democratic Party, he received death threats and was attacked as a traitor, including by members of his own family.The undoing of Mr. Riggleman — and now his unlikely crusade — is revealing about a dimension of conservative politics today. The fight against radicalism within the G.O.P. is a deeply lonely one, waged mostly by Republicans like him who are no longer in office, and by the small handful of elected officials who have decided that they are willing to speak up even if it means that they, too, could be headed for an early retirement.“I’ve been telling people: ‘You don’t understand. This is getting worse, not better,’” Mr. Riggleman said, sitting on a stool at his family bar one recent afternoon. “People are angry. And they’re angry at the truth tellers.”Mr. Riggleman, 51, is now back home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he and his wife run the bar and a distillery. And for his next move in a career that has included jobs at the National Security Agency and founding a military contracting business, he is working with a group of other experts to shine a light on what he calls the “social disease” of disinformation.His experience with the issues and emotions at work is both professional and personal. He was so intrigued by false belief systems that he self-published a book about the myth of Bigfoot and the people who are unshakably devoted to it.Mr. Riggleman is working with a group of other experts to shine a light on what he calls the “social disease” of disinformation.Matt Eich for The New York TimesMr. Riggleman, who first ran and won in 2018 after the Republican incumbent in his district retired, joined the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and was endorsed by Mr. Trump. Now he says it “gives me shivers” to be called a Republican. He hopes to show that there is still a way to beat back the lies and false beliefs that have spread from the fringe to the mainstream. It is a heavy lift, and one that depends on overcoming two strong impulses: politicians’ fear of losing elections and people’s reluctance to accept that they were taken in by a lie.Mr. Riggleman summarized his conversations with the 70 percent of House Republicans he said were privately appalled at the former president’s conduct but wouldn’t dare speak out.“‘We couldn’t do that in our district. We would lose,’” he said. “That’s it. It’s that simple.”Stocky, fast-talking and inexhaustibly curious, the former congressman is now working for a group of prominent experts and academics at the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of disinformation in American politics and how to thwart it. The group has undertaken several extensive investigations into how extremists have used propaganda and faked information to sow division over some of the most contentious issues of the day, like the coronavirus pandemic and police violence.Their reports have also given lawmakers a better understanding of the QAnon belief system and other radical ideologies that helped fuel the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.Mr. Riggleman said he had written one report about the involvement of far-right militants and white supremacist groups in the attack specifically at the request of a Republican member who needed help convincing colleagues that far-left groups were not the culprits.Getting lawmakers to see radical movements like QAnon as a threat has been difficult. Joel Finkelstein, the director of the Network Contagion Research Institute, said that in June, when the group tried to sound the alarm on QAnon to members of Congress, Mr. Riggleman was the only one who responded with a sense of urgency and agreed to help.“We were screaming it from the rooftops,” Mr. Finkelstein said. “We said: ‘This is going to be a problem. They’re growing increasingly militant in their conspiracies.’” When the institute’s members spoke to Mr. Riggleman, he said, “We showed him our data and he said, ‘Holy moly.’”Far from a theoretical or overblown concern, disinformation and its role in perpetuating false beliefs about Mr. Trump’s election loss and its aftermath are problems that some Republicans believe could cripple their party if left ignored.In a sign of how widespread these conspiracy theories are, a recent poll from Suffolk University and USA Today found that 58 percent of Trump voters wrongly believed the storming of the Capitol was mostly inspired by far-left radicals associated with antifa and involved only a few Trump supporters.“There was a troika of us who said, ‘This is going to a bad place,’” said Paul Mitchell, who represented Michigan in the House for two terms before retiring early this year in frustration. He said he had watched as members dismissed Mr. Riggleman, despite his experience in intelligence. “There weren’t many people who gave a damn what your expertise was,” Mr. Mitchell said. “It was inconsequential compared to the talking points.”Bob Good defeated Mr. Riggleman in a state Republican Party convention in June.Amy Friedenberger/The Roanoke Times, via Associated PressMr. Riggleman’s loss last summer in a closely held party convention allowed him to be more outspoken. The winner, Representative Bob Good, is a former associate athletic director at Liberty University who took issue with Mr. Riggleman’s officiation at the gay wedding and called him “out of step” with the party’s base.And as Mr. Riggleman kept it up and spoke out more aggressively against Mr. Trump after the election, his fight got lonelier.“I had a colleague of mine pat me on the shoulder and say: ‘Denver, you’re just too paranoid. You’re killing yourself for the rest of your life politically by going after the big man like this,’” Mr. Riggleman recalled.When he returned to Virginia for good in January, he said he sometimes felt just as isolated. Family members, former constituents and patrons at the distillery insisted that the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump. And they couldn’t be talked out of it, no matter how hard he tried.He recalled a recent conversation with one couple he is friends with that he said was especially exasperating.“I go over stats,” he said. “I go over figures. I go over the 50 states, how that actually works. How machines that aren’t connected are very hard to hack. How you’d have to pay off hundreds of thousands of people to do this.”“Did not convince them,” he added.Other friends of his, some of whom are also members of the growing group of former Republican lawmakers now publicly criticizing Mr. Trump, said that many conservative politicians saw no incentive in trying to dispel disinformation even when they know it’s false.“What some of these guys have told me privately is it’s still kind of self-preservation,” said Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who ran a short-lived primary campaign against Mr. Trump last year. “‘I want to hang onto the gig. And this is a fever, it will break.’”That is mistaken, Mr. Walsh said, because he sees no breaking the spell Mr. Trump has over Republican voters anytime soon. “It’s done, and it was done a few years ago,” he said.Mr. Riggleman, who is contemplating a run for governor in Virginia and is writing a book about his experience with the dark side of Republican politics, sees a way forward in his experience with Bigfoot. The sasquatch was how many people first learned about him as a politician, after an opponent accused him of harboring a fascination with “Bigfoot erotica,” in 2018.“I do not dabble in monster porn,” he retorts in his book, “Bigfoot … It’s Complicated,” which he based in part on a trip he took in 2004 on a Bigfoot expedition.Mr. Riggleman paid $2,000 to go on a Bigfoot expedition with his wife in 2004.Matt Eich for The New York TimesThe book is full of passages that, if pulled out and scrubbed of references to the mythical creature, could be describing politics in 2021.Mr. Riggleman quotes one true believer explaining why he is absolutely convinced Bigfoot is real, even though he has never seen it. In an answer that could have come straight from the lips of someone defending the myth that Mr. Trump actually won the 2020 election, the man says matter-of-factly: “Evidence is overwhelming. Check out the internet. All kinds of sightings and facts.”At another point, Mr. Riggleman describes a conversation he had with someone who asked if he really thought that all the people claiming to have seen Bigfoot over the years were liars. “I don’t think that,” Mr. Riggleman responds. “I do believe that people see what they want to see.”He did find one way to crack the Bigfoot false belief system: telling true believers that they were being ripped off to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars to go on expeditions where they would never actually see the creature.“They got very angry,” he said. But eventually, some started to come around. More

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      in Elections

      Trump’s Latino Support Was More Widespread Than Thought, Report Finds

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      While Latinos played a major role in Democratic victories last year, Donald Trump’s outreach to them proved successful in states around the country, not just in certain geographic areas.Even as Latino voters played a meaningful role in tipping the Senate and the presidency to the Democrats last year, former President Donald J. Trump succeeded in peeling away significant amounts of Latino support, and not just in conservative-leaning geographic areas, according to a post-mortem analysis of the election that was released on Friday.Conducted by the Democratically aligned research firm Equis Labs, the report found that certain demographics within the Latino electorate had proved increasingly willing to embrace Mr. Trump as the 2020 campaign went on, including conservative Latinas and those with a relatively low level of political engagement.Using data from Equis Labs’ polls in a number of swing states, as well as focus groups, the study found that within those groups, there was a shift toward Mr. Trump across the country, not solely in areas like Miami or the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where the growth in Mr. Trump’s Latino support has been widely reported.“In 2020, a segment of Latino voters demonstrated that they are more ‘swing’ than commonly assumed,” the report stated.Ultimately, Mr. Trump outperformed his 2016 showing among Latino voters, earning the support of about one in three nationwide, even as Joseph R. Biden Jr. won those voters by a roughly two-to-one margin over all, according to exit polls.All told, close to 17 million Latino voters turned out in the general election, according to a separate analysis published in January by the U.C.L.A. Latino Policy & Politics Initiative. That represented an uptick of more than 30 percent from 2016 — and the highest level of Latino participation in history.With the coronavirus pandemic and the related economic downturn taking center stage on the campaign trail, Equis Labs found that many Latino voters — particularly conservatives — had focused more heavily on economic issues than they had four years earlier. This helped Mr. Trump by putting the spotlight on an issue that was seen as one of his strong suits and by drawing some attention away from his anti-immigrant language.In focus groups, Equis Labs’ interviewers noticed that Mr. Trump’s history as a businessman was seen as a positive attribute by many Latino voters, who viewed him as well positioned to guide the economy through the pandemic-driven recession. Partly as a result, the analysis found, many conservative Latino voters who had been hanging back at the start of the campaign came around to supporting him.Driving up turnout among low-propensity voters — something that Senator Bernie Sanders had sought to do during his campaign for the Democratic nomination — did not necessarily translate into gains for Democrats in the general election, the study found. People who were likely to vote generally grew more negative on Mr. Trump’s job performance over the course of 2020, but among those who reported being less likely to participate in the election, his job approval rose.This finding is likely to fuel hand-wringing among Democratic strategists who worried that Mr. Biden had not done enough to court skeptical Latino voters ahead of November.The movement toward Mr. Trump appeared mostly “to be among those with the lowest partisan formation,” the analysts wrote. “We know enough to say these look like true swing voters. Neither party should assume that a Hispanic voter who cast a ballot for Trump in 2020 is locked in as a Republican going forward. Nor can we assume this shift was exclusive to Trump and will revert back on its own.”Chuck Coughlin, a Republican pollster in Arizona, said he was unsurprised by the results of the Equis Labs report, given what he said had been a concerted effort by the Trump campaign to win Latino support.“You saw it in the rallies out here,” he said. “They did a rally down in Yuma. They did a rally at the Honeywell plant out here. All of those featured Hispanic small-business owners. They were working that crowd.”He said the Trump campaign’s messaging on economic and social issues had resonated for many Latino voters, particularly older ones. “They’re pro-business, they’re pro-gun, they don’t like higher taxes, they don’t trust the government,” he said. “It’s the same constituency that you see among Anglo Trump voters.”While the report didn’t closely analyze voters by their nations of origin, it did demonstrate that Mr. Trump’s relative success among Latino voters compared with four years earlier was not limited to areas with large populations of Cuban-Americans, Venezuelan-Americans and other demographics that have typically trended more conservative.Carmen Peláez, a playwright and filmmaker in Miami who helped lead the campaign group Cubanos con Biden, said that after the election, many observers had sought to ascribe Mr. Trump’s improvement among Florida Latinos to a shift among Cuban-Americans in the southern part of the state.The findings from Equis Labs validated her experience last year, she said, which showed that Latinos of all nationalities had been targeted online with advertisements and messages that scared them away from Democrats.“People love blaming the Cubans, but you can’t just blame the Cubans,” she said. “There is a cancer in our community, and it’s disinformation, and it’s hitting all of us.”Ms. Peláez said Democrats had habitually taken Latino voters for granted by mistakenly assuming that they knew those voters’ political habits and attitudes. Cuban-Americans, for example, are often painted with a broad brush as conservative.“It was assumed all Latinos would be pro-immigration or they were taken for granted because they were assumed to be a lost vote,” she said. “There’s never a lost vote if you are really willing to engage. But willing to engage means setting aside your own prejudices.” More

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      in Elections

      What Georgia’s Voting Law Really Does

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      Go page by page through Georgia’s new voting law, and one takeaway stands above all others: The Republican legislature and governor have made a breathtaking assertion of partisan power in elections, making absentee voting harder and creating restrictions and complications in the wake of narrow losses to Democrats.The New York Times has examined and annotated the law, identifying 16 provisions that hamper the right to vote for some Georgians or strip power from state and local elections officials and give it to legislators.Republicans passed and signed the 98-page voting law last week following the first Democratic victories in presidential and Senate elections in Georgia in a generation. President Biden won the state by just 11,779 votes out of nearly five million cast. The new law will, in particular, curtail ballot access for voters in booming urban and suburban counties, home to many Democrats. Another provision makes it a crime to offer water to voters waiting in lines, which tend to be longer in densely populated communities.Below is The Times’s analysis of the law, including the specific provisions and some struck-through language from the state’s previous voting legislation.Here are the most significant changes to voting in the state, as written into the new law:Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots.There are strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots.It’s now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.Drop boxes still exist … but barely.Mobile voting centers (think an R.V. where you can vote) are essentially banned.Early voting is expanded in a lot of small counties, but probably not in more populous ones.Offering food or water to voters waiting in line now risks misdemeanor charges.If you go to the wrong polling place, it will be (even) harder to vote.If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours.With a mix of changes to vote-counting, high-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results.Election officials can no longer accept third-party funding (a measure that nods to right-wing conspiracy theories).With an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage an election hotline.The Republican-controlled legislature has more control over the State Election Board.The secretary of state is removed as a voting member of the State Election Board.The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials.Runoff elections will happen faster — and could become harder to manage.Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots.Page 38: Not m̶o̶r̶e̶ earlier than 1̶8̶0̶ 78 days or less than 11 days prior to the date of the primary or election, or runoff of either, in which the elector desires to vote, any absentee elector may make, either by mail, by facsimile transmission, by electronic transmission, or in person in the registrar’s or absentee ballot clerk’s office, an application for an official ballot of the elector’s precinct to be voted at such primary, election, or runoff.Georgia has cut by more than half the period during which voters may request an absentee ballot, from nearly six months before an election to less than three.This will almost certainly reduce the number of people who seek absentee ballots and the number of people who vote. In the last presidential election, 1.3 million Georgians — about 26 percent of the state’s electorate — voted with absentee ballots. Of those who returned absentee ballots in 2020, 65 percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and 34 percent chose Donald J. Trump.The shorter window will also limit opportunities for get-out-the-vote efforts and could put greater strain on local election boards, which will have less time to process ballot requests.There are strict new ID requirements for absentee ballots.Page 38: In order to confirm the identity of the voter, such form shall require the elector to provide his or her name, date of birth, address as registered, address where the elector wishes the ballot to be mailed, and the number of his or her Georgia driver’s license or identification card issued … If such elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license or identification card … the elector shall affirm this fact in the manner prescribed in the application and the elector shall provide a copy of a form of identification … The form made available by the Secretary of State shall include a space to affix a photocopy or electronic image of such identification.Page 57: In order to verify that the absentee ballot was voted by the elector who requested the ballot, the elector shall print the number of his or her Georgia driver’s license number or identification card … in the space provided on the outer oath envelope. The elector shall also print his or her date of birth in the space provided in the outer oath envelope.If the elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license or state identification card … the elector shall so affirm in the space provided on the outer oath envelope and print the last four digits of his or her social security number in the space provided on the outer oath envelope.If the elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license, identification card … or a social security number, the elector shall so affirm in the space provided on the outer oath envelope and place a copy of one of the forms of identification in the outer envelopePreviously, Georgia law required voters to simply sign their absentee ballot applications. Now they will have to provide the number from a driver’s license or an equivalent state-issued identification. This is virtually certain to limit access to absentee voting.The law also creates pitfalls for voters: If they fail to follow all the new steps, like printing a date of birth or in some cases including partial Social Security numbers, their ballots could be tossed out. Mr. Trump’s lawyers and allies urged judges and Republican officials last year to invalidate some ballots that were out of compliance. Stringent voter-ID laws in other states have depressed voting mostly among people of color.It’s now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.Page 39: A blank application for an absentee ballot shall be made available online by the Secretary of State and each election superintendent and registrar, but neither the Secretary of State, election superintendent, board of registrars, other governmental entity, nor employee or agent thereof shall send absentee ballot applications directly to any elector except upon request of such elector or a relative authorized to request an absentee ballot for such elector.No person or entity other than a relative authorized to request an absentee ballot for such elector or a person signing as assisting an illiterate or physically disabled elector shall send any elector an absentee ballot application that is prefilled with the elector’s required information set forth in this subparagraph.When the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, mailed absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in the state ahead of its June primary election. This led to absentee voting by record numbers of Georgians.When Mr. Raffensperger didn’t mail applications again for the general election, several local government agencies did so, particularly in Georgia’s large urban counties — a move that the state has now made illegal. With the loss of automatically mailed applications, some voters will invariably not request ballots, since the applications also served as a reminder to people that they were eligible to vote.The new law also forbids third-party groups to prefill applications for voters, which made applying for an absentee ballot easier for many voters.Drop boxes still exist … but barely.Page 47: A board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk may establish additional drop boxes … but may only establish additional drop boxes totaling the lesser of either one drop box for every 100,000 active registered voters in the county or the number of advance voting locations in the county. Any additional drop boxes shall be evenly geographically distributed by population in the county.Drop boxes … shall be established at the office of the board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk or inside locations at which advance voting … is conducted in the applicable primary, election, or runoff and may be open during the hours of advance voting at that location. Such drop boxes shall be closed when advance voting is not being conducted at that location.For the 2020 election, there were 94 drop boxes across the four counties that make up the core of metropolitan Atlanta: Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett. The new law limits the same four counties to a total of, at most, 23 drop boxes, based on the latest voter registration data. The number could be lower depending on how many early-voting sites the counties provide.There won’t just be fewer drop boxes. Instead of 24-hour access outdoors, the boxes must be placed indoors at government buildings and early-voting sites and will thus be unavailable for voters to drop off their ballots during evenings and other nonbusiness hours.The measure is likely to have the effect of pushing absentee voters to return ballots through the mail, which in 2020 did not prove as reliable as in the past because of cuts to the Postal Service.Mobile voting centers (think an R.V. where you can vote) are essentially banned.Page 31: The superintendent of a county or the governing authority of a municipality shall have discretion to procure and provide portable or movable polling facilities of adequate size for any precinct; provided, however, that buses and other readily movable facilities shall only be used in emergencies declared by the Governor … to supplement the capacity of the polling place where the emergency circumstance occurred.Last year, Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, had two recreational vehicles that traversed the county during the early voting periods, effectively bringing polling sites to people at churches, parks and public libraries. In the November election, more than 11,200 people voted at the two vehicles in Fulton County.Georgia has now outlawed this practice, unless the governor declares a state of emergency to allow it — something that Mr. Kemp, a Republican, is unlikely to do given that it could increase voter turnout in Atlanta.Early voting is expanded in a lot of small counties, but probably not in more populous ones.Page 59: There shall be a period of advance voting that shall commence: (A) On the fourth Monday immediately prior to each primary or election; and (̶B̶)̶ ̶O̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶m̶m̶e̶d̶i̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶;̶ ̶(̶C̶)̶ ̶O̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶m̶m̶e̶d̶i̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶d̶i̶d̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶;̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶(̶D̶)̶(B) As soon as possible prior to a runoff from any o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ general primary or election i̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶y̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶d̶i̶d̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ but no later than the second Monday immediately prior to such runoff and shall end on the Friday immediately prior to each primary, election, or runoff.Voting shall be conducted d̶u̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶o̶r̶m̶a̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶s̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶s̶ beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m. on weekdays, other than observed state holidays, during such period and shall be conducted on the second S̶a̶t̶u̶r̶d̶a̶y̶ and third Saturdays during the hours of 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. and, if the registrar or absentee ballot clerk so chooses, the second Sunday, the third Sunday, or both the second and third Sundays prior to a primary or election during the hours o̶f̶ ̶9̶ ̶a̶.̶m̶.̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶4̶ ̶p̶.̶m̶.̶ determined by the registrar or absentee ballot clerk, but no longer than 7 a.m. through 7 p.m.Page 60: Except as otherwise provided in this paragraph, c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶u̶n̶i̶c̶i̶p̶a̶l̶i̶t̶i̶e̶s̶ the registrars may extend the hours for voting b̶e̶y̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶u̶l̶a̶r̶ ̶b̶u̶s̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶s̶ to permit advance voting from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. and may provide for additional voting locations … to suit the needs of the electors of the jurisdiction at their option; provided, however, that voting shall occur only on the days specified in this paragraph and counties and municipalities shall not be authorized to conduct advance voting on any other days.These new strict rules on early voting hours are likely to curtail voting access for Georgians who work daytime hours or have less flexible schedules and who may be unable to return an absentee ballot.The provision requires counties to hold early voting during weekday working hours — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. — and says it may be held for longer but may not take place before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. on those days. The early voting period will begin four weeks before an election. The previous iteration of the law called only for early voting during “normal business hours” and left it up to counties to determine those hours.The provision also adds a second required Saturday of early voting (the previous law required only one), which will increase access to early voting in most of the state’s rural counties, where election administrators have often been short-staffed and have offered fewer hours of early voting. Most larger counties in the state already offered multiple weekend days of early voting.The law doesn’t require the availability of early voting on Sundays, which means that counties can choose whether to open for early voting on up to two Sundays before an election. While the previous law did not require Sunday voting either, it also did not impose any restrictions; the new law states that counties may offer only two Sundays of early voting.Counties that choose not to open on Sundays would be limiting ballot access for parishioners at Black churches that have often organized parishioners to vote after Sunday services.Offering food or water to voters waiting in line now risks misdemeanor charges.Page 73: No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector, nor shall any person solicit signatures for any petition, nor shall any person, other than election officials discharging their duties, establish or set up any tables or booths on any day in which ballots are being cast: (1) Within 150 feet of the outer edge of any building within which a polling place is established; (2) Within any polling place; or (3) Within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place. These restrictions shall not apply to conduct occurring in private offices or areas which cannot be seen or heard by such electors.This Code section shall not be construed to prohibit a poll officer from distributing materials, as required by law, which are necessary for the purpose of instructing electors or from distributing materials prepared by the Secretary of State which are designed solely for the purpose of encouraging voter participation in the election being conducted or from making available self-service water from an unattended receptacle to an elector waiting in line to vote.Perhaps no provision in the Georgia law has received more attention than this one, which effectively bars third-party groups or anyone else who is not an election worker from providing food and water to voters waiting in line. Republicans defended the provision, saying it is enforceable only within a 150-foot radius of polling places. Civil rights groups note that it also prevents assistance “within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place.”Long lines for voting in Georgia are an unfortunate reality, and are often found in the poorer, densely populated communities that tend to vote Democratic. During the primary election last June, when temperatures hovered above 80 degrees with high humidity, multiple voting locations across the state had lines in which voters waited more than two hours.Numerous studies have shown that long lines deter people from voting. According to research by the Bipartisan Policy Center, an independent research group, over 560,000 voters did not cast ballots in 2016 “because of problems related to polling place management, including long lines.” In 2014, Stephen Pettigrew, then a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard’s department of government, conducted a study that found that more than 200,000 voters did not vote in the midterm elections that year because they had faced long lines during the 2012 election.The new law does make it clear that it is legal for voters to drink from a water fountain, if one exists along the line to vote and provided they get the water themselves.If you go to the wrong polling place, it will be (even) harder to vote.Page 74: If a person presents himself or herself at a polling place, absentee polling place, or registration office in his or her county of residence in this state for the purpose of casting a ballot in a primary or election stating a good faith belief that he or she has timely registered to vote in such county of residence in such primary or election and the person’s name does not appear on the list of registered electors, the person shall be entitled to cast a provisional ballot in his or her county of residence in this state as provided in this Code section.If the person presents himself or herself at a polling place in the county in which he or she is registered to vote, but not at the precinct at which he or she is registered to vote, the poll officials shall inform the person of the polling location for the precinct where such person is registered to vote.The poll officials shall also inform such person that any votes cast by a provisional ballot in the wrong precinct will not be counted unless it is cast after 5 p.m. and before the regular time for the closing of the polls on the day of the primary, election, or runoff and unless the person executes a sworn statement, witnessed by the poll official, stating that he or she is unable to vote at his or her correct polling place prior to the closing of the polls and giving the reason therefor.From 2012 to 2018, Georgia shuttered more than 214 voting precincts around the state, according to an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Those changes, many of which followed the Supreme Court’s hollowing out of the federal Voting Rights Act in 2013, confused many voters, who upon showing up to the wrong precinct had to vote with provisional ballots.This provision removes even that remedy for voters who arrive at the wrong precinct before 5 p.m., requiring them to instead travel to the correct precinct or risk being disenfranchised.Casting a provisional ballot after showing up at the wrong precinct was by far the most common reason for voting provisionally in the 2020 election in Georgia; roughly 44 percent of provisional ballots in the state were from “out of precinct voters,” according to data from the secretary of state’s office. And in Fulton County, 66 percent of the accepted provisional ballots were from “out of precinct” voters.Of the 11,120 provisional ballots that were counted in the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Biden won 64 percent and Mr. Trump took 34 percent.If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours.Page 72: Poll hours at a precinct may be extended only by order of a judge of the superior court of the county in which the precinct is located upon good cause shown by clear and convincing evidence that persons were unable to vote at that precinct during a specific period or periods of time. Poll hours shall not be extended longer than the total amount of time during which persons were unable to vote at such precinct. Any order extending poll hours at a precinct beyond 9 p.m. shall be by written order with specific findings of fact supporting such extension.This is a small change, but it could have a significant impact on whether voting hours can be extended in the event of a problem.Previously, a judge could order that a precinct stay open for as long as necessary based on a problem that had hindered voting (for example, if power went out for 30 minutes, the judge could add an hour of balloting at the end of the day). The new provision requires any relief period to match exactly the amount of time that people were unable to vote.Georgia is no stranger to Election Day mishaps and problems. Its primary last June was marred by hourslong lines caused by malfunctioning machines. Some precincts had no choice but to ask every voter to file a provisional ballot. Other precincts stayed open later into the night.Under the new law, if similar election problems were to occur, voters who had to leave would have less time to come back later.With a mix of changes to vote-counting, high-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results.Page 65: Beginning at 8 a.m. on the third Monday prior to A̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶l̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ the day of the primary, election, or runoff, t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶i̶s̶t̶r̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶b̶s̶e̶n̶t̶e̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶c̶l̶e̶r̶k̶s̶ election superintendent shall be authorized to open the outer oath envelope o̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶o̶r̶ of absentee ballots that have been verified and accepted i̶n̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶n̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶e̶s̶t̶r̶o̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶o̶n̶;̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶v̶i̶d̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶e̶v̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶i̶s̶t̶r̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶b̶s̶e̶n̶t̶e̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶c̶l̶e̶r̶k̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶a̶u̶t̶h̶o̶r̶i̶z̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶remove the contents of such outer envelope,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ open the inner envelope marked ‘Official Absentee Ballot,’ e̶x̶c̶e̶p̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶w̶i̶s̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶v̶i̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶C̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ and scan the absentee ballot using one or more ballot scanners.At least three persons who are registrars, deputy registrars, poll workers, or absentee ballot clerks must be present before commencing; and three persons who are registrars, deputy registrars, or absentee ballot clerks shall be present at all times while the o̶u̶t̶e̶r̶ absentee ballot envelopes are being opened and the absentee ballots are being scanned. A̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶p̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶e̶n̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶s̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶f̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶c̶u̶r̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶u̶n̶t̶i̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶a̶b̶u̶l̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶s̶.̶However, no person shall tally, tabulate, estimate, or attempt to tally, tabulate, or estimate or cause the ballot scanner or any other equipment to produce any tally or tabulate, partial or otherwise, of the absentee ballots cast until the time for the closing of the polls on the day of the primary, election, or runoff except as provided in this Code section.One key factor in how widely Mr. Trump and his allies were able to spread falsehoods about the 2020 election was that it took more than two weeks for news outlets to declare that President Biden had won Georgia. With such a long delay, Republicans successfully sowed doubts about the election’s validity by baselessly arguing that fraud must have taken place.Georgia Republicans’ new voting law does allow the absentee ballot counting process to begin much earlier, with local clerks allowed to open and inspect absentee ballots three weeks before an election.Still, no ballots can be counted until the polls close, meaning the process of tabulating and reporting vote totals is likely to be lengthy for high-turnout contests. That could lead future candidates to follow Mr. Trump’s lead in trying to contest the results of a legitimate election.Election officials can no longer accept third-party funding (a measure that nods to right-wing conspiracy theories).Page 18: No superintendent shall take or accept any funding, grants, or gifts from any source other than from the governing authority of the county or municipality, the State of Georgia, or the federal government. The State Election Board shall study and report to the General Assembly a proposed method for accepting donations intended to facilitate the administration of elections and a method for an equitable distribution of such donations state wide by October 1, 2021.Last year, as election officials faced countless challenges trying to hold voting during a pandemic, funding for the November general election became tied up in the political debate over the second stimulus package.Many local election jurisdictions in Georgia and other states, particularly those in poorer urban areas, turned to outside philanthropic groups like the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit organization funded by Mark Zuckerberg that helped counties pay for their elections in 2020. Now Georgia has eliminated that option.Conspiracy theories in right-wing circles have long focused on the specter of nefarious outsiders swaying election operations with donations; the theories often involve anti-Semitic falsehoods about George Soros, the billionaire liberal donor, who is also Jewish.With an eye toward voter fraud, the state attorney general will manage an election hotline.Page 8: The Attorney General shall have the authority to establish and maintain a telephone hotline for the use of electors of this state to file complaints and allegations of voter intimidation and illegal election activities. Such hotline shall, in addition to complaints and reports from identified persons, also accept anonymous tips regarding voter intimidation and election fraud.Complaints about possible voter intimidation and fraud had previously been run through a web of county election officials and the secretary of state before reaching the state attorney general, but this provision centralizes them and deputizes the attorney general to handle them.Placing that responsibility within the attorney general’s office may help remove partisan influence to actions that are taken in response to complaints, but voting rights groups say it could serve as an intimidation tactic. And attorneys general themselves could bring their own partisan influence.The Republican-controlled legislature has more control over the State Election Board.Page 8: There is created a state board to be known as the State Election Board, to be composed of t̶h̶e̶ ̶S̶e̶c̶r̶e̶t̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ a chairperson elected by the General Assembly, an elector to be elected by a majority vote of the Senate of the General Assembly at its regular session held in each odd-numbered year, an elector to be elected by a majority vote of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly at its regular session held in each odd-numbered year, and a member of each political party to be nominated and appointed in the manner provided in this Code section. No person while a member of the General Assembly shall serve as a member of the board.This is one of a few provisions that strip power from the secretary of state and indirectly shift it to the legislature by creating a new chair of the State Election Board. Previously, the secretary of state had served in that role.The law dictates that the newly created chair be “nonpartisan,” but the position is appointed through the partisan legislature. Voting rights groups say this amounts to the legislature’s exerting more control over the State Election Board and election oversight in general.The provision does contain some partisan guardrails: In the two years immediately preceding a chair’s appointment, he or she cannot have been a candidate for public office or have made any political campaign contributions.But it also looks an awful lot like a revenge move: Republican lawmakers are taking power away from Mr. Raffensperger, who infuriated Mr. Trump and some G.O.P. leaders in the state by rebuffing the former president’s fraud claims.The secretary of state is removed as a voting member of the State Election Board.Page 11: The Secretary of State shall be t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶i̶r̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶a̶r̶d̶ an ex officio nonvoting member of the board. Three voting members of the board shall constitute a quorum, and no vacancy on the board shall impair the right of the quorum to exercise all the powers and perform all the duties of the board. The board shall adopt a seal for its use and bylaws for its own government and procedure.This is a more direct attack on the powers of the secretary of state, effectively eliminating that person’s voice on the State Election Board.Viewed through the lens of the 2020 election, this could be seen as revenge for Georgia Republicans against the current secretary of state, Mr. Raffensperger, who would not capitulate to Mr. Trump’s demands to overturn the results under a false banner of fraud.The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials.Page 11: The State Election Board may suspend county or municipal superintendents and appoint an individual to serve as the temporary superintendent in a jurisdiction. Such individual shall exercise all the powers and duties of a superintendent as provided by law, including the authority to make all personnel decisions related to any employees of the jurisdiction who assist with carrying out the duties of the superintendent, including, but not limited to, the director of elections, the election supervisor, and all poll officers. (g) At no time shall the State Election Board suspend more than four county or municipal superintendents pursuant to subsection (f) of this Code section.Another power play by Republican state lawmakers. Tensions have long simmered between state and county election officials in Georgia, particularly in Fulton County, the largest Democratic hub in the state, where officials say they have been targeted and deprived of support by Republicans at the state level. Election officials in Fulton County, for their part, have had their historical share of mistakes and mismanagement.Now the State Election Board, newly influenced by the partisan Legislature, will have the power to suspend county election officials. That part of the new law alarmed some Democratic legislators, who noted that it could particularly affect counties like Fulton, which contains 15 percent of those in the state who voted Democratic in the November election.The law does state that the bar for suspension is high: either a minimum of three clear violations of State Election Board rules, or “demonstrated nonfeasance, malfeasance, or gross negligence in the administration of the elections” in two consecutive elections.In the event of a suspension, the State Election Board would name a temporary replacement.Runoff elections will happen faster — and could become harder to manage.Page 87: In instances where no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast, a run-off primary, special primary runoff, run-off election, or special election runoff between the candidates receiving the two highest numbers of votes shall be held. Unless such date is postponed by a court order, such r̶u̶n̶-̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶,̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶,̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶-̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ runoff shall be held a̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶v̶i̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶s̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶(̶2̶)̶ ̶I̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶j̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶T̶u̶e̶s̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶i̶n̶t̶h̶ ̶w̶e̶e̶k̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶l̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶.̶ ̶ ̶ ̶(̶3̶)̶ ̶I̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶j̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶T̶u̶e̶s̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶i̶n̶t̶h̶ ̶w̶e̶e̶k̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶l̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶ ̶ ̶(̶4̶)̶ ̶I̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶j̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶d̶ on the twenty-eighth day after the day of holding the preceding general or special primary or general or special election.Georgia has had its fair share of runoff elections recently; both of its newly seated Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, prevailed in such contests. The shortening of the runoff election window, which Republicans say was meant to help election administrators, could also end up overburdening them, forcing a quick turnaround to hold a runoff election even as officials are still working to certify and ratify the initial general election vote.Shortening the runoff time will also affect both early voting and military and overseas voters. While the bill states that early voting for a runoff should begin “as early as possible,” it does not specifically require weekend voting.Additionally, federal election law states that ballots for military and overseas voters must be mailed out 45 days before an election, so those voters will now receive ranked-choice general-election ballots rather than second, separate ballots for the runoff.

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