Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp addresses the House of Representatives at the Capitol in Atlanta on March 28, 2024.
Just when you thought that voter suppression tactics couldn’t get any worse, the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature passed a law late Friday that adds new anti-democracy gimmicks to the existing repressive law, the Voting Integrity Act, enacted in 2021. Under that law, any registered voter in Georgia can challenge the registration of any other voter.
Since then, Republican operatives have coordinated registration challenges to over 100,000 voters, mostly in areas that lean Democratic, literally overwhelming the election administration machinery and pro-democracy groups. One man developed a database, Eagle AI, that allows people to search for potentially ineligible voters.
In a ruling in January 2024, federal district judge Steve Jones upheld the constitutionality of the Georgia law. Voting rights advocates led by Fair Fight have appealed that decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The new law, Senate Bill 189, adds several more odious provisions to encourage amateur fraud-hunters to challenge the registrations of other voters. It defines new kinds of “probable cause” for upholding challenges that could lead to voters being removed from the rolls.
These include the presumption that the voter has died, or has registered to vote in a different jurisdiction, or registered at a nonresidential address. In many small towns where people have post box addresses, the new law would make it easier to remove them from the rolls. Under the law, homeless people must also redo their voter registrations. Previously, registered voters without permanent addresses have registered at shelters or government offices.
The measure is now headed to the desk of Gov. Brian Kemp for signature. Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, won praise in 2020 for resisting Trump’s pressure to find enough votes for Trump to carry the state. But as a partisan Republican, Raffensperger is a big supporter of the voter suppression measures.
The Georgia ACLU will file suit against the latest bill, if Gov. Kemp, as expected, signs it into law. “Access to the ballot is at the heart of our democracy. This election ‘Frankenbill’ violates the National Voter Registration Act,” Georgia ACLU executive director Andrea Young said in a statement. “We are committed to protecting Georgia voters. If the governor signs this bill, we will see him in court.”
The ACLU said the bill makes it easier for people to file “baseless, mass voter challenges, requires all advance and absentee ballots to be counted within an hour of the polls closing, changes ballot design, makes harmful changes for unhoused citizens, and creates unrealistic and burdensome requirements of election workers.”
We will see more of this. The only antidotes are massive efforts to register and turn out voters—and once Trump is defeated, four years of judicial appointments to turn the courts back into impartial judges rather than partisan hacks.
