Lessons from Georgia's hot mess -- April 8, 2021 column

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 21^st” 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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Sore loser hurts himself and the country -- Dec. 3, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

On Wednesday, the United States reported nearly 3,000 people had died in one day from the coronavirus, and President Donald Trump released a speech on video.

It could be his most important speech ever, he said, but it wasn’t about the record loss of life for a single day or that as many Americans died of the coronavirus in one day as perished on 9/11.

Instead, the president railed for 46 minutes about “bad things” in the election, again making baseless claims about fraud, ballot “dumps” and conspiracy theories.

Trump is doing a disservice to the country and to his legacy with his continuing attacks on the electoral process. He will go down in history as a president who was impeached, lost his re-election bid and spread more conflict, distrust and hatred on his way out.

Unfortunately, many of his supporters believe his unsubstantiated claims. History shows repeating a lie often enough makes it seem credible, especially a lie from a trusted figure.

Trump has spun his web of deceit into a successful fund-raising effort that reportedly has reaped $170 million since the election. He claims it is for his lawsuits but could use it for the 2024 comeback presidential campaign he is said to be considering.

He is still being aided and abetted by many Republican members of Congress. And yet, some Trump allies and hand-picked subordinates are finally standing up and refuting his lies.

Attorney General William Barr told the Associated Press Tuesday, “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

That prompted Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, to claim there hasn’t been “any semblance” of an investigation into Trump’s complaints.

But Barr Nov. 9 authorized U.S. attorneys around the country to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities even before the vote tallies were certified, despite the lack of any evidence of widespread fraud. The Justice Department’s top elections crime official left the post after Barr sent the memo.

Trump badgers Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, as “hapless,” and urges him to use his “executive powers” to undo the election, even after the state counted, recounted by hand and certified the election for Joe Biden. Kemp rightly says he does not have such powers.  

Trump also tried to stop Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, from certifying that state’s electoral votes to Biden.

Ducey had made “Hail to the Chief” the ringtone of Trump’s calls, so he wouldn’t miss one. But when the tone played while Ducey was on live TV at the certification ceremony, Ducey put down his phone and signed anyway.

Trump threatened that Republicans “would remember.”

On Nov. 17, Trump fired by tweet Christopher Krebs, a Republican, Trump appointee and Senate-confirmed director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security.

Krebs had batted down the president’s claims that election systems were hacked or manipulated, saying in a tweet “59 election security experts all agree, `in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have ben unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.’”

One of Trump’s legal henchmen said Krebs should be executed. He later said he was just being sarcastic.

Trump previewed his obstinacy long ago. In 2016 and this year, he insisted he could not lose unless the election was rigged. But because someone can’t stand to lose is not grounds to toss out millions of legal mail-in votes.

Courts around the country have shut down Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the election, citing a lack of credible evidence of fraud.

When U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Brann in Pennsylvania ruled Trump’s allegations were “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations . . . unsupported by evidence,” team Trump tried to discredit him as an “Obama appointee.”

Yes, but. Brann is a conservative Republican and member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. The state’s two senators, one Republican and one Democrat, recommended him to Obama for the judgeship.

We rely on free and fair elections to choose our leaders. Trump’s refusal to accept reality exacerbates the gulf between Americans and is dangerous for the future of our democracy.

If Trump wants to run again in 2024, that’s his business. Now he needs to put the country first.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Primary campaigns battle over guns -- pro and con -- May 3, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A Virginia man made news doing something utterly legal and routine.

Dan Helmer, an Army veteran, went to a gun show in Northern Virginia and bought a semiautomatic rifle similar to the one he carried in Iraq and Afghanistan in under 10 minutes -- without a background check.

He could have been someone with deadly intentions, but Helmer was making a point about lax gun laws.

He’s one of six Democrats competing in the June 12 primary for the prize of competing in November against Rep. Barbara Comstock, the Republican incumbent representing the 10^th District.

Helmer demonstrated how easy it is for someone showing only a Virginia ID to buy what he calls “an incredibly dangerous piece of weaponry that’s meant for war,” adding the gun show in Chantilly was less than two miles from a school.

It took him less time than buying a cup of coffee.

Federal law requires licensed gun dealers to conduct background checks, but the “gun show loophole” allows non-licensed sellers or private sellers to bypass background checks.

Helmer’s campaign surreptitiously recorded the transaction and posted the video online. It promptly went viral.

“Weapons of war don’t belong on our streets,” he says.

 Comstock was a top recipient in the House of National Rifle Association contributions in 2016. Election trackers say she’s vulnerable in a district where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 10 points.

The primary campaigns of 2018 increasingly are a battle over guns. Democrats fight among themselves over who’s tougher on gun control while Republicans go after each other on who’s stronger on the 2^nd Amendment. 

Democrat Karen Powers Mallard, a reading teacher from Virginia Beach making her first bid for Congress, used a video to show her commitment to ridding the streets of assault weapons. 

She took a saw to her husband’s AR-15 – and videoed its destruction. Her husband dropped off the gun pieces at the police station -- but not before gun rights advocates blasted his wife online.

Mallard’s competitor in the 2^nd District Democratic primary is Elaine Luria, a Naval Academy graduate and retired Navy commander, who, like Mallard, favors tougher gun control.

But Rep. Scott Taylor, the Republican incumbent, is a former Navy SEAL who opposes stricter gun control laws. The race leans Republican, election trackers say.

Sometimes contests get nasty. Helmer criticized state Sen. Jennifer Wexton, the only Democratic candidate who has elected office experience, for supporting a legislative compromise that expanded the rights of people with concealed-carry handgun permits.

Wexton has an F rating from the NRA. She said Helmer doesn’t know what it’s like to be in the legislative trenches. She has raised more money than others in the race and has more endorsements from fellow lawmakers, including Gov. Ralph Northam.  

Primary season begins in earnest this month with contests in 11 states. Virginia is among 17 states with primaries in June, the busiest month. There are none in July, 14 in August and five in September, the National Conference of State Legislatures reports.

The gun issue cuts both ways, as Trump’s fourth appearance before the NRA in four years indicates. The NRA invested $30 million in Trump’s 2016 campaign, and despite his pledging to “do something” to stop gun violence, he hasn’t. His frequent campaign rallies keep his base motivated to vote in November and in 2020.

One of the more interesting gun-centric GOP races is the gubernatorial primary in Georgia. Secretary of State Brian Kemp just released an ad in which he sits surrounded by guns, rubbing a cloth over a shotgun, while he quizzes a teenager named Jake, “a young man interested in one of my daughters.”

Kemp then points the shotgun in Jake’s direction. It’s supposed to be funny.

Last month, another would-be governor, West Point grad and Army combat veteran Hunter Hill, aired an ad called “Liberals won’t like this” that showed him loading an assault rifle.   

He’s surely right, but will they vote?

In off-year elections, people tend to snooze through primaries and don’t bother to vote. This year could be different, with Democrats energized and Parkland students keeping the issue alive. But only those who actually cast ballots have a say in who wins.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved. 30