Branden Camp/AP Photo
Voters line up to cast their ballots on Election Day, November 3, 2020, in Emerson, Georgia.
For most of 2020’s primary elections and general election, voters had to closely track changes in polling places and voting options, as state and local election officials responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. This ended up having a positive impact. Many Americans used vote-by-mail and early in-person alternatives for the first time, to stay safe and cast their ballots in what was the most secure election ever. The more convenient voting options also led to historic turnout, the highest in over a century.
But some Republican politicians across the country see this expanded voter engagement as a problem to be fixed.
Since the November elections, more than 100 bills restricting access to the ballot in 28 states have been introduced in state legislatures, according to a study from the Brennan Center for Justice. This is three times as many bills than were introduced in the same period in 2020, ahead of the presidential election. But of course, that was before months of election disinformation, viral videos, and “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theories spread by former President Trump and his allies, both during early-voting periods and after his loss.
“It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not really responsive to any need, except for the one that was created by people latching on to these false narratives,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “The voter fraud people are concerned about was manufactured by politicians.”
The increased volume of proposed legislation is directly a result of the last election cycle, she explains, but it’s also a continuation of the United States’ trend of more restrictive voting laws, which was only temporarily reversed in the pandemic.
Many of these reforms are focused on absentee voting, which was a primary way people cast their ballots to avoid lines and social contact in 2020. Some states, like New Jersey, organized all-mail-in voting, while others, like New York and Pennsylvania, greatly expanded access to the mail-in option.
Several proposed bills aim to reduce access to the vote-by-mail option, either by requiring a pre-approved excuse, limiting where the ballots can be returned, or increasing the burden of verification with witness signature or voter ID requirements.
Other legislation proposes changes to in-person voting. Six states that currently don’t ask voters to show IDs at the polls have proposed bills to start requiring it, along with two other states that would start asking people for voter IDs during early voting. Another study by the Brennan Center shows that about 11 percent of people living in states with voter ID laws who are eligible to vote do not have the right kind of identification to do so.
This legislation is being filed across the country in red and blue states, but many of the proposals are in swing states. Pennsylvania, a Biden state that has a Republican legislature, has filed the most restrictive voting law changes, with 14 new bills.
Legislation proposed this week in Georgia takes direct aim at the absentee voting system. More than one million Georgians utilized this option during both the November general election and the January runoffs, which elected President Joe Biden and two Democratic senators, respectively. Several bills would limit access by requiring voters to either send in their driver’s license number or a photocopy of their license when voting by mail and applying to vote by mail. Another bill would eliminate the use of drop boxes, an alternative to putting your ballot in the mail. Another would start requiring a pre-approved excuse to request a ballot, instead of the state’s current no-excuse system, which was implemented by former Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue (a Trump Cabinet member) 15 years ago.
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Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have both previously said that they would support photo ID requirements for absentee ballots, and Raffensperger has said that no-excuse absentee voting “makes no sense.”
“It seems like in some cases it is taking advantage of the narrative that there’s something to be concerned about,” Lakin says. “Georgia is one example of that, where the secretary of state is out in public assuring everyone that this past election was as secure as possible, it was audited, there was a recount, it survived through all of these different forms of media attention and litigation. And then at the same time [he’s] turning around and saying, ‘Well, we are a little concerned about the integrity of the election system,’ and [then] making it more difficult for voters to vote.”
In response to this attack on voter participation, a network of grassroots organizers in the Peach State are asking people to phone and write to their state officials to vote against these proposals.
“Let them know that this is unnecessary,” Helen Butler, of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, said on a media call. “All of these draconian bills that are being introduced are trying to take us back, but we’re not going back. We intend to have free open access to the ballot and that’s what we’re fighting for today.” Butler made a direct appeal to voters who participated in Georgia’s elections over the past few months. “You cannot sit by,” she said. “You have to let your elected officials know that this cannot be tolerated.”
Butler was joined by representatives of ten other voting rights organizations in Georgia, who highlighted that people of color and older voters in particular would be most hurt by these restrictions.
Some Republican politicians across the country see this expanded voter engagement as a problem to be fixed.
It’s currently unclear how many of these bills will become law, and how their implementation could impact voters the next time they head to the ballot box. But the immediate backlash to 2020’s historic turnout shows a vulnerability in the U.S. election system that had been avoided through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, before the Supreme Court fundamentally weakened it.
In 2013’s Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, a provision in the Voting Rights Act called “preclearance” was struck down. Previously, states with histories of voter suppression had to have changes to their voting laws reviewed before implementation by the Department of Justice for their impact on people based on race, the language they speak, and their abilities to cast their ballots independently and privately. Georgia was one of the states previously covered by preclearance.
“I think that the evidence demonstrates that you probably wouldn’t even see some of the [bills]” with preclearance in force, Lakin says. “If you look at the bills that were blocked under that regime, what that number doesn’t capture is the number of bills that never made it to the light of day.”
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which passed the House of Representatives in 2020, would be one federal remedy to the Shelby County decision, restoring preclearance and other measures wiped out by the Supreme Court. But there are also state-level law changes that can be implemented without navigating through Washington gridlock.
Not all the proposed voting-law bills are restrictive. “It’s not all bad news,” Lakin says. The Brennan Center found that about 400 bills introduced, profiled, or carried over from a prior session across the country would expand access to the ballot. Ninety-three of those come from New York and New Jersey alone.
“It’s pretty exciting that there have been so many states where there has been such positive energy put into expanding voting rights and making permanent some of the changes that were put in place [because of the pandemic],” Lakin says. “We’ll probably see a number of these bills [expanding access] pass.”
