WASHINGTON, DC — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger argues that the strong turnout in the 2022 midterm elections vindicates his state’s 2021 election law from libel that it represents “Jim Crow 2.0.”
“We proved that Georgia has no voter suppression. It’s easy to vote. It’s safe to vote,” Raffensperger, the state’s top election official, said in an interview with The Daily Signal on Thursday.
After the passage of Senate Bill 202, which extended voter ID requirements to include mail-in voting, Democrats incorrectly dubbed the measure “Jim Crow 2.0,” a reference to the era of racist laws in the Southern states that spanned from the post-Civil War to WWII Passing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s.
“SB 202, the 2021 Election Integrity Act, made sure that no matter how you vote in Georgia, everything is photo ID based. That gave voters confidence,” Raffensperger, a Republican, said in Washington this week at the annual meeting of the National Association of State Secretary of State.
An independent poll conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Data and Science Laboratory in conjunction with the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs found that 99% of voters felt safe at polling stations, 98.9% reported no issues or difficulties voting, 97% rated interactions with poll workers as “good” or “excellent,” and 95.3% reported wait times of less than 30 minutes.
The left-leaning New York Times described turnout in 2022 — 56% — as strong but “shy of the highwater mark of 2018.”
Georgia’s 2021 law not only mandates absentee ballots, but also establishes guidelines for ballot boxes, requires polling station queues to be no longer than one hour per person, and gives the state election board more control about the administration of the district elections. The measure also bans political activists from offering food, bottled water or other items of value within 150 feet of polling stations.
“It was required that the queues had to be less than an hour. The average waiting time on election day was two minutes,” said Raffensperger. “We also found that the longest wait time we’ve seen was 50-minute wait times in just one or two of our 2,500 counties. Those were just during [the] Lunchtime so we really worked with the county to keep those lines short so voters could have a great experience.”
Failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams led warnings that the law would suppress voters, and President Joe Biden traveled to Atlanta in early 2022 to deliver a fiery speech that included supporters of the Georgia law and electoral reforms in other states Jefferson Davis and George Wallace. Democrats in Congress also joined the attack.
The rhetoric has proven to be misleading because the law makes voting easier, Raffensperger said.
“We had 17 days of early voting. The second day we added was a Saturday, so now we have 17 days and two Saturdays,” Raffensperger said. “People who vote on Saturday, these are hardworking Georgians who don’t have Monday to Friday off, so they just made it possible for these people to vote. Overall, people on both sides of the aisle were happy with the process. We showed everyone that voting in Georgia is easier, but hard to cheat. It’s successful, it’s safe and it’s honest.”
He noted that Abrams led the allegations of suppression after losing the 2018 gubernatorial race by about 50,000 votes.
“Since her defeat in 2018, we’ve pushed back the voter suppression myth of Stacey Abrams,” Raffensperger said.
“She had multiple counts in her Fair Fight lawsuit. We won when it finally went to court,” added Raffensperger. “None of their claims have ever been backed up by facts.”
Across the country, 19 states have passed similar electoral reform measures that have expanded voter ID requirements, mostly to mail-in ballots. This meant that the last four digits of a social security number or driver’s license number had to be included in the absentee ballot application.
In some cases, these states had higher voter turnout than states that did not adopt electoral reform.
Maryland, for example, which does not require a voter ID, had a nearly 10% lower voter turnout in 2022 than it did in 2018, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Washington Post.
Maryland Secretary of State Susan Lee, a Democrat, said the state legislature has considered voter identification in the past but is more focused on encouraging voter participation by enacting an Election Day voter registration law and the Expand “extremely popular” early voting and voting by mail.
“In Maryland, our goal is not only to have safer elections, but to encourage more people to vote and in the spirit of the Voting Rights Act passed in the 1960s,” Lee told The Daily Signal. “The more people vote, the better. They exercise their right to vote and they exercise their voice. It also serves to promote our democracy.”
When asked if there is evidence that voter ID laws suppress voting, she replied, “I think you should talk to other states that have passed that because our laws were passed to protect voter registration and participation in our democracy.” to increase.”
Regarding electoral reforms passed in 2021, former West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant noted that Texas saw a 12% increase in rejected ballots after expanding ID requirements for absentee ballots in the March 2022 primary.
Tennant, a Democrat who attended the conference, said she wasn’t opposed to voter IDs but said they should be “appropriate.”
“What I do know is that we want people to choose who they are and I think if you look at voter ID laws they have to be fair and reasonable to the voter and shouldn’t have any preference over any type of Have ID,” she said.
“Like Texas why is a concealed gun permit like me that originally had no picture on it why is it ok but no student ID?” Tennant added. “You have to be reasonable like in West Virginia where there’s like 18 to 20 different ways to use it as an ID, like a debit card, like any you can think of: a military ID, a student ID, a social security ID.”
In the March 2022 primary, Texas saw an increased turnout of 3.03 million voters, up from 2.59 million in the comparable 2018 midterm election. However, turnout in the 2022 general election fell 7% from the 2018 midterm record, but was still higher than turnout in any previous midterm election, The Texas Tribune reported.
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