Despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud, Georgia Republicans are vowing to craft legislation that will make voting harder in the state.
According to NBC News, Republican officials in the state announced plans on Tuesday to limit access to mail-in voting and to dismantle election laws that contributed to the state’s record turnout. The legislation seems to be designed as a response to President Trump’s month-long temper tantrum over the validity of the election results.
“As soon as we may constitutionally convene, we will reform our election laws to secure our electoral process by eliminating at-will absentee voting. We will require photo identification for absentee voting for cause, and we will crack down on ballot harvesting by outlawing drop boxes,” the Republican Senate majority caucus wrote in a press release.
Ballot harvesting—a practice where an organization such as a church or advocacy group delivers multiple ballots—is already outlawed in Georgia so that’s an imaginary problem off the jump. There is also no evidence that drop boxes lead to fraud more than any other voting method. Additionally, ballots in those drop boxes are collected by state election officials, so it’s not as though there’s some third-party in charge of this.
Also, it should be noted that the no-excuse absentee voting system was crafted in 2005 by former Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue. He ain’t one of those Lincoln Project types either; Perdue currently works as Trump’s secretary of agriculture. Georgia Republicans just seem mad that a system they designed was used to benefit more than just white people.
“The Georgia Senate Republicans have heard the calls of millions of Georgians who have raised deep and heartfelt concerns that state law has been violated and our elections process abused in our November 3, 2020 elections. We will fix this,” the lawmakers wrote.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but read that as “Look, we’re sorry the Negroes overwhelmingly exercised their constitutional right to vote, but dammit, we’ll make sure it never happens again.”
It’s literally the only way these moves make sense. The fact that they’re unwinding a standardized signature matching system because it led to less mail-in ballots being rejected should tell you everything about why they’re actually doing this.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has repeatedly said that there is no evidence of systemic fraud and yet he’s in favor of more restrictive voting laws. If you’ve already admitted that widespread fraud isn’t a pressing issue, then why be in favor of making voting harder for people who are already eligible?
Well, actually, I’m pretty sure we know why.