By MARSHA MERCER
It’s fair to say Georgia’s rush to approve a
restrictive new election law didn’t go the way Republican proponents hoped.
Predicated on the lie that the 2020 election in
Georgia was riddled with fraud, the 98-page Election Integrity Act includes 16
key provisions a New York Times analysis found “will limit ballot access, potentially
confuse voters and give more power to Republican lawmakers.”
Reactions were swift and harsh. President Joe Biden attacked
the law as “Jim Crow in the 21st” century, and four lawsuits are
challenging the law as discriminatory against people of color.
Major League Baseball pulled the All-Star Game from
Atlanta, delivering an early verdict on lawmakers’ intentions and potentially
costing the state $100 million in lost revenue.
Moving the game to Denver will hurt most the people in
Atlanta who are already suffering in the pandemic economy -- small business
owners and the workers who rely on low-paying jobs in the tourist industry.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s stubborn response that other
states’ voting laws are as bad as, or worse than, Georgia’s is childish and
embarrassing.
Ditto Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s ham-handed
threat this week to corporations to shut up about policy issues.
“Stay out of politics,” he warned on Tuesday, only to
reverse himself on Wednesday.
But if Georgia GOP lawmakers thought their hot mess of
a law would befuddle and silence enough urban voters to make a difference in
close elections, they weren’t taking into account Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance
Bottoms.
Bottoms showed strategic leadership Tuesday with an
administrative order directing the city’s equity office to develop a plan to mitigate
the new law’s effects.
“This administrative order is designed to do what
those in the majority in the state legislature did not – expand our right to
vote,” she said.
A mayor can’t undo what the legislature and governor have
done, but she can take actions they should have: help voters prepare for future
elections.
Her order includes measures to train city staff on
voter registration and on early, absentee and in-person voting so they can
communicate the changes to residents. It also directs the city to educate
residents on how to obtain the forms of ID now required for absentee voting and
to include QR codes and links regarding voter registration and absentee voting
in water bills and other mailings.
Surely, we can all agree that when a state changes
election rules, it has a responsibility to inform voters about those changes,
so that eligible voters can indeed cast ballots.
Sadly, no. There’s no indication Georgia plans to
educate voters or help them more easily comply with the law’s provisions.
Meanwhile, the GOP disinformation campaign with unproven allegations about election
fraud continues.
Six in 10 Republican voters believe the 2020 election
was “stolen” from Donald Trump, and the same proportion say he should run again
in 2024, a new Reuters/IPSOS poll reports.
The former president continues to harp on “massive
fraud” in the election, sowing distrust in the voting system. After multiple ballot
recounts, investigations and court cases found no widespread voter fraud
anywhere in 2020, this deliberate and willful ignoring of facts is appalling.
But lawmakers in more than 40 states, feeling pressure
to do something, have introduced more than 361 bills to limit ballot
access. About 55 bills are moving forward, according to the Brennan Center for
Justice, a nonprofit policy institute that tracks voting rights.
Texas and Arizona are
poised to pass restrictive laws, although what effect the laws may have is
uncertain.
Georgia’s new law could have been worse. It will
suppress the vote by making it harder for people to vote absentee and offering fewer
ballot drop boxes, but Sunday voting was preserved.
And the GOP effort could backfire if new laws motivate
voters to go to the polls in even greater numbers for gubernatorial and
congressional midterm elections in 2022.
A coalition of more than 200 companies, including such
giants as Dow, Twitter, Paypal and Uber, recently spoke out in favor of voting
rights. Their voices are welcome, but it’s time to act.
The companies should join with state and local groups
to spread the word about what the new laws entail, so eligible voters can
indeed
prepare for casting
their ballots. Our elections need all of us, and we all need fair elections.
©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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