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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 10 days ago, Georgia passed a nearly 100-page overhaul of its election laws that immediately caused an uproar. Democrats, Delta, Coca-Cola, and now even Major League Baseball. But it turns out some of these corporations were involved in crafting the legislation. On the show today, We're going to try and figure out what's going on in Georgia and why it matters, even if you're not in Georgia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it matters because of Georgia's 2020 election season. Emma Hurt is a politics reporter at WABE in Atlanta. It was a really competitive state, as many people might remember. Just about a 12,000 vote margin in November for Biden. He flipped the state blue after decades of Republican control. And then there were these Democratic big upset wins in our Senate runoffs right afterwards.
--:-- Emma Hurt: And then you layer on that former President Trump's false claims of voter fraud that really began to coalesce and focus in on Georgia, where there were a lot of conspiracy theories and false allegations swirling around about the elections. And so this law also seems to appear that it's playing into that, that big lie of voter fraud.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so it really doesn't look great for Republicans, even though it's an 100-page law that does a lot of things. Some would argue restrict voting and others actually expand it. Well, you said it's almost 100 pages. Let's talk about what exactly is in the law. Can you break it down for us? I'm not going to be able to cover all of it, but I'll do my best to cover the headlines.
--:-- Emma Hurt: The headlines that have really grabbed attention are that it adds a new ID requirement for absentee ballots, replaces the state signature match policy and tries to match the ID requirement for an absentee ballot with that of voting in person where you have to show an ID. right? It cuts the window in which you can request an absentee ballot in Georgia in half from 180 days to 78.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it also moves the deadline for which that application can come in up, which is something that counties had requested. It bans the discretionary use of mobile polling places, but it expands requirements for early voting hours and weekend early voting. It forces counties who see precincts with long lines longer than an hour to respond in the next election cycle. So they have to add machines or split the precincts up.
--:-- Emma Hurt: With absentee ballot drop boxes, it codifies them into law. So all counties have to have one. And so that means that some counties which didn't have one will now have one. However, it also limits the total that a county can have based on population, which will limit the amount of drop boxes that are in counties in metro Atlanta, for example, compared to this last election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It also limits where they can go and for how long they can be open, which people see as a restriction. I'm going to keep going. If you're cool with me, keep rambling. I got a couple other points.
--:-- Emma Hurt: Yeah, keep going. Sure. Okay. It bans someone from handing out food or drink to a voter in line. And this is something that's gotten a lot of attention. So it's banning being nice to voters? So that's what some people are arguing about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Republican perspective on it is that you had these partisan groups that might not have been campaigning for a candidate or, you know, not violating the electioneering law, you know, which most I think all states have banning anyone from campaigning at a polling place. But it's like, oh, this is a group founded by a Democrat. We're not advertising the Democrat, but here's some free water. And so Republicans saw that as too much of a gray area.
--:-- Emma Hurt: And they're saying, you can still set up your table 150 feet away. And it's not something that many other states have. And then the last big thing that's gotten a lot of attention is that it gives the state election board, which is, it's controlled by whoever controls the state capitol, which right now is Republicans. It gives them new powers to appoint a superintendent to take over a county elections department if that department is deemed to be problematic after a couple years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then, on top of that, with the state election board, it replaces our statewide elected secretary of state with someone who is elected by the General Assembly as chairman on that board. So that's seen as a power grab by the state capitol over elections administrations, which, in Georgia, is largely managed by the counties individually.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so you were right. That was a very long list. At least one thing was about expanding the hours in which people can vote. That being said, President Biden has called this Jim Crow in the 21st century. But is it fair to say that this isn't all necessarily voter suppression, but maybe some of it is?
--:-- Emma Hurt: Yeah. And, you know, this characterization of Jim Crow 2.0 is indicative of something else that you really can't separate this law from. You can't separate it from the 2020 election. And you also can't separate it from Georgia and other states in the South's really horrible histories with voting access, disenfranchising people of color and, you know, all of these horrible Jim Crow era laws that many led and died to fight against.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the Republicans who wrote this law have really bridled at that characterization. They don't see it as relevant at all. And to those who call it Jim Crow 2.0 or Jim Crow in a suit and tie you say That is just sad that someone would stoop to that type of name calling We want everybody to have a chance to vote
--:-- Emma Hurt: Is there backlash the second this thing is signed There is. And actually, I don't know if people remember, but that night a Georgia state representative was arrested in the Capitol because she was knocking on the governor's door trying to witness the signing ceremony because it was signed within an hour of it being passed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our governor is signing a bill that affects all Georgians, and you're going to arrest an elected representative. There were lawsuits filed immediately. Tonight, a third federal lawsuit has been filed challenging Georgia's new voting law, which was signed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp last week.
--:-- Emma Hurt: The lawsuit filed by civil rights groups claims that the new law restricts the rights of voters, including voters of color and those in religious communities. And then there was also pressure on Georgia's business community because when all else fails, you know, Georgia prides itself as being a business-friendly state. And so these companies do have a lot of influence in Georgia. And so that's where the story has gone now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, tell me a bit more about the corporate backlash. Word on the curb is that these businesses had been involved, some of Georgia's major businesses like Delta and Coca-Cola and the Chamber of Commerce, as the bill was being written.
--:-- Emma Hurt: Wait, why would Delta or Coca-Cola be involved in this process at all? Because Delta and Coca-Cola have an interest in Georgia's reputation. Do we know how Delta and Coke and anyone else weighed in in the process of writing this law?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We know that Governor Kemp has said... But we were also having, I mean, talking to the business community a lot, probably, you know, at least once a day on, you know, what the Senate was doing, what the House was doing, getting their feedback. And that's just part of the legislative process.
--:-- Emma Hurt: I think it was very helpful for everybody. And, you know, the day after the bill was passed, Delta released this statement that was sort of vaguely, you know, we're in favor of voting access. And it didn't say anything about the law specifically.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think some of the Republicans in the middle who wrote this believed that it had been a compromise and that business had been at the table just like, Everyone else had had their input. But the pressure continued to mount. And I think there were behind-the-scenes meetings with corporate leaders from voting rights activists, leaders in the Black community, saying, This is not okay. You need to do more than just kind of a lukewarm statement about it.
--:-- Emma Hurt: Even if you tried to lobby to make it better, that's not good enough at this point. And so almost a week after the law was passed, all of a sudden we've got these statements from businesses all over the place. We have a group of African-American business leaders around the country, including the CEO of Merck, former CEO of American Express, decrying, you know, broadly, this push of, you know, voter security measures around the country led by Republicans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then we had these very, these very forceful statements from the hometown guys from Delta and Coca-Cola, which really caught Republicans by surprise. Because remember, they said they'd been at the table the whole time. They never had any big complaints. And Delta's CEO came out and called the law unacceptable and said it was based on a lie.
--:-- Emma Hurt: The right to vote is sacrosanct and we can't do anything to send a message to people that we're going to make it more restrictive and harder to have their voice heard. Coca-Cola's CEO called it unacceptable as well. So now we're focused on advocating and trying to get it changed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so this really, you know, Republicans in the legislature felt almost betrayed by this because Delta and Coke are Georgia's, you know, gems in in the business community. Right. They're some of the largest employers. And this really threw them for a loop.
--:-- Emma Hurt: And within the day, because Delta and Coca-Cola came out with those statements the last day of the Georgia General Assembly. And that night, the statehouse passed a law with a last minute change that would, hmm, conveniently remove Delta's fuel tax break, which it has enjoyed for years. It didn't get picked up by the state Senate, so it didn't become law. But it was very much kind of unabashed retaliation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, the House Speaker said, you don't feed the dog that bites your hand. They love our policies when it benefits them. But now they're saying this about our other policies. I mean, there's that. And then there's even been a couple of state lawmakers who have said we don't want to serve Coca-Cola products in our suites anymore, in our offices.
--:-- Emma Hurt: Are they going to have to drink Pepsi? That is a question. And actually, the House speaker said, you know, I tried a Pepsi the other day and it wasn't half bad. And that is sacrilegious in Georgia political and business communities. I mean, there are very few people who would admit to drinking a Pepsi by choice in Georgia to this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I know it seems like a silly thing, but that is huge symbolism in Georgia. And we haven't even talked about the biggest single backlash Georgia has suffered as a result of this law, which was that on Friday... Breaking news here on CBS Sports HQ. Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announcing that the league is taking the 2021 All-Star Game away from Atlanta.
--:-- Emma Hurt: The move comes in response to new voter laws Democrats and Republicans alike are not happy with that decision, right? I mean, there are Democrats who represent that area where the stadium is, who have said this is not going to help Georgians at all. This is going to negatively affect Georgians' livelihoods.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the pressure, the national pressure, really didn't let up. And it really, it felt like this wasn't just a Georgia issue anymore. You know, the MLB was responding to something far larger than that. I mean, the law is the law now. And as you pointed out, the legislative session has ended. What can the possible upshot of all of this corporate backlash, though certainly getting a lot of headlines, what could it what could it be?
--:-- Emma Hurt: So I think people are looking for support on the multiple federal lawsuits that have been filed against the law already. And then they're looking for support on the federal legislation that's been in the works, the federal voting rights legislation that would prevent some of these state laws like Georgia from passing and really, you know, increase the federal government's role in voting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you right The law is the law And I will say that Governor Kemp and other Republican leaders in response to the MLB you know pulling of the game have said we not backing down I mean we not going to change anything We not going to back down to quote cancel culture and has defended the bill up and down Cancel culture They brought in cancel culture Yeah, they did.
--:-- Emma Hurt: And, you know, politically, it's been an interesting moment for Brian Kemp because he faced a lot of backlash from pro-Trump supporters after the 2020 election because he refused to comply with former President Trump's request basically to overturn the election. He stood his ground. He defended the Constitution and said, I can't do that. That's not in my job description as governor.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But now this pushback has given Kemp a platform to really unite with those people who perhaps had been on the fence about him saying, I support Governor Kemp again, we're all in this together against the left trying to cancel Georgia, meddle in Georgia's elections, et cetera, et cetera.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This Georgia election reform, voter suppression, whatever you want to call it, it isn't happening in a vacuum. It's happening in the wake of a very big lie. That's in a minute on Today Explained.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Georgia is getting a lot of attention right now, but this isn't just a Georgia thing. This is an all over the country thing. Ian Millhiser has been writing about it for Vox. There's over 360 voter suppression bills that have been introduced throughout all 50 states.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Some of them are going to go nowhere. Some of them in places like Texas and maybe Florida and Arizona, I think, are likely to become law. And what we're seeing in these bills, you're seeing a mix of standbys that the GOP has supported for a really long time, things like voter ID laws, cuts to Sunday voting because African-American churches often do voting drives on Sundays, various barriers to voter registration, voter purges, which means kicking people off the registration rolls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Those are all things that the Republican Party has been trying to pass in a lot of states for a really long time. But we're also seeing three entirely new things. Which are the three new things?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: One is this provision in the Georgia bill, which prevents people from giving food and water to people waiting in line for voting. Florida already has copycat legislation that would do the same thing there. So we could see this proliferate.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The second and this is, I think, the single most disturbing part of the Georgia law is that it allows the state election board, which is controlled by Republicans, to take over local election boards and local election boards have the power to adjudicate challenges to individual voters.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: So they could potentially say that certain people aren't allowed to vote. They have the power to certify elections. So you could potentially have a situation where Georgia, if the Democrat wins, refuses to certify the election. And I don't know what happens then.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then the third new thing that we're seeing, not just in Georgia, we're seeing this in a lot of states, is all kinds of bills to make it harder to vote by mail. And we already talked a bit about those first two with Emma, but voting by mail. Didn't we all discover together last year that restricting voting by mail isn't just going to hurt Democrats?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: So historically, voting by mail hasn't favored either party. In 2020, what changed is that Donald Trump ran around talking about and he was lying. I mean, none of this is true, but talking about how there is widespread fraud in voting by mail that led to Democrats. Biden voters being much more likely to vote by mail than Republican voters than Trump voters were.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I think a lot of Republican state legislatures are sort of fighting the last war here. They saw in the last election that Democrats were more likely to cast a mailed in ballot. So they figure, aha, if we make it so harder for people to cast mail in ballots, that could prevent Democrats from voting.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Does that actually work? Make it harder to vote when the election? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of empirical evidence showing that they're fighting the wrong war here. There was a study, for example, out of Texas. Texas has a very unusual law where if you're 65 and older, you're allowed to vote absentee. If you're younger than 65, then most people under 65 are not allowed to vote absentee.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was very little difference in the partisan makeup of 65 year olds and the partisan makeup of 64 year olds in the 2020 election. So, you know, what it looks like happened there is that Democrats over 65 were more likely to vote by mail. But 64 year old Democrats still turned out. They just turned out in a different way.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: So it's not clear that it's going to work. That said, one pattern we see, you know, when I speak to a lot of scholars, who study election law. What they told me is that things like voter ID you know things like making it harder to register harder to vote they don always work And the reason they don always work is because people sound the alarm You know the Democratic Party sounds the alarm Voting rights advocates sound the alarm
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And because people hear the alarm that this state is making it harder for people to vote people get angry and they wind up turning out anyway And the two effects can wind up canceling each other out So that's potentially good news. At the same time, it means it's really important for everyone to sound the alarm, because if in fact it is true that the backlash to voter suppression methods winds up counterbalancing the actual voter suppression that occurs, then you need to make sure that that backlash occurs.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: And that means that people need to know that these states are intentionally trying to make it harder to vote because they want Republicans to vote and not Democrats. The backlash is all about voter suppression. They're they're trying to suppress Democratic votes, black votes. But of course, that isn't the term being used by the people pushing these so-called voter reforms.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How are Republican lawmakers selling this stuff? Yeah. So, you know, often hear phrases like voter integrity or voter fraud thrown around. The idea is that by making it harder to vote will sometimes prevent fraud from happening.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: The problem is that voter fraud basically doesn't exist. I mean, there's all kinds of studies looking into this. And like, you know, there are studies that look at millions and millions of ballots in Oregon and find, you know, maybe dozens of examples of voter fraud. You know, Iowa's Republican secretary of state did a statewide audit looking for examples of people who were voting what's called in-person voting fraud, pretending to be someone else at the polls. He found zero examples of that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, I mean, voter fraud just is not a problem. Basically, what these states are doing is they're saying, oh, there's this problem where fire breathing dragons and unicorns might come in and steal an election. And in order to prevent the dragons and unicorns from stealing our election, we need to make it harder for everyone to vote. And that's just not a valid justification because dragons don't exist.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Does the Supreme Court believe in dragons, Ian? I mean, unfortunately, the Supreme Court seems to believe in unicorns and dragons. So what the Supreme Court has been doing, and it's probably going to get worse because Trump put three three justices on the court, is it has been slowly dismantling the Voting Rights Act.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the Voting Rights Act is the primary mechanism in this country to fight against racist voter laws. And the reason why race matters so much is in a typical election between 80 and 90 percent of black voters will vote for the Democrat and about 60 to 70 percent of Latino voters will vote for the Democrat.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: And so Republican lawmakers know that they can use race as a proxy to identify where the Democratic communities are. You know, if you close down many of the polling precincts in a black neighborhood, you know that the people who are going to wind up having to wait six hours in line and if they're in Georgia without food or water in order to vote are going to be Democrats or 80 to 90 percent of them are going to be Democrats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so as the Supreme Court keeps dismantling the Voting Rights Act, it makes it easier for states to target black and brown neighborhoods, which means that Republicans are more likely to win elections. And all of this stems from a big lie, a big lie that was intended to extend the former president's time in the White House. That didn't work. But is this like the big lie's second life? Is it working in a way he maybe didn't foresee?
--:-- Ian Millhiser: It's certainly working on Republican state lawmakers. I mean, you know, the big lie is this idea that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020 that somehow cost Donald Trump the election. There was no evidence, none. I mean, even members of Trump's own administration have said that there was no evidence of the kind of voter fraud that Trump talks about.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it also seems to be I mean, there's polls showing enormous majorities of rank and file Republican voters believe some version of the big lie. And so that means that there is now a constituency for this kind of voter suppression. But this does seem to be motivating a lot of state lawmakers to engage in the sort of aggressive voter suppression that we haven't seen since Jim Crow.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: You know, and one thing that I will point out about the Jim Crow South is that the state of Mississippi didn't pass very many laws saying if you're black, you can't vote. They pass a literacy test. They pass a grandfather clause saying that if you're registered to vote before a certain date, then you got to remain registered. And of course, that date was a date when almost everyone who was registered to vote was white.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jim Crow statutes weren't written in racist terms, but they achieved racist ends. And this law, though, was passed in Georgia. Like, I don't think you're going to find a reference to race in it. But the purpose of the law is to prevent Democrats from voting. And they know that certain tactics will work because they know that they can use race as a proxy in order to identify where Democrats live.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: Okay and let's just say these laws get up to the supreme court and the supreme court that has already dismantled the voting rights act doesn't reject them let's say these laws stand then what if the state says you need an id to vote get that id if a state says that you need to ride to the polls on a black llama. Invest in llamas, dragons, unicorns and black llamas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I mean, I'm being serious here. You know, like if they erect a wall, you're going to have to find a way to either go over that wall or through it. And it's going to put a huge burden on voters. It's going to put a huge burden on voting rights advocates as put a huge burden on the Democratic Party.
--:-- Ian Millhiser: But the way to defeat this is that every voter's going to have to work a little bit harder. Ian Millhiser writes about the Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United States at Vox. He has a new book out. It's called The Agenda, How Republican Supreme Court is Reshaping America.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram for him. This is Today Explained.
