Last week the majority Republican state legislature in Georgia passed a new bill that will greatly alter voting access within the state and has already come under some significant criticism. The full bill can be found here. The bill posits at least 16 new provisions that change how absentee ballots are distributed, what identification can be used to vote, and where people can vote. Perhaps most famously, the bill outlaws providing food or water to people waiting in line to vote, a detail that has made national headlines. The debate centered around the bill has been largely in response to two Democratic senators being elected from this historically red state, in an election that saw unprecedented absentee turnout as well as long lines at the in-person polling stations. Republicans see the bill as a template for much needed reform, while Democrats largely see it as a regression back to Jim Crow-esque restrictions.
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Campus Liberal
The Georgia voter suppression bill is incredibly partisan, a clear power grab in retaliation to recent Democratic gains in the
state. That being said, the bill is not 100% evil as some Democrats have claimed. Although the bill reduces access to absentee voting by making it more difficult to both request and submit these ballots, the bill also does away with signature matching, a hotly contested practice in the most recent presidential election. Although they are reducing drop off locations and reducing the number of polling locations, they have not fully gotten rid of drop off boxes. The bill as a whole seems to follow this exact template. The legislature does something bad but doesn’t do it all the way, so it could be worse. It is true, it could certainly be worse.
That being said, however, my view on the bill is not as muddled by political niceties as the Wall Street Journal’s opinion. I believe it is the problem of the current Democratic problem to accept regressive policies solely because they could be worse. This bill presents a perfect moment for Democrats to stand against voter suppression in all forms. The New York Times lays out 16 ways that this new bill harms voter access in Georgia. It should be unacceptable to have any part of a bill that harms access to voting in a democracy. Right wing pundits will claim that it is securing the vote for real Americans. They will claim that it is not voter “suppression” but voter “security.” These claims only apply to white upper class America. Requiring certain IDs requires access to some resources that a lot of minority communities do not have. Honestly, all the proof you need is that the bill doesn’t allow you to give water to people standing in lines for voting. It does not ban advertising candidates to them, or any other practice that might be considered interference, it literally only makes it harder to vote. The bill’s goal is to reduce voter turnout, especially from poorer communities. Regardless of any good moments within the bill, it should be opposed and challenged in courts.
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Campus Conservative
While the rhetoric coming from those on the left-of-center certainly makes this bill seem like voter suppression, the reality demonstrates that this is incorrect. Actually reading the vote and understanding the political reality of the United States today paints a much less sinister and much more reasonable picture of the voting bill in Georgia. To start, according to Gallup, a vast majority of Americans support some form of voter ID laws in elections; in addition, 77% of nonwhite respondents also favored voter identification, which seems to contradict the idea that requiring voter IDs disproportionately suppresses the minority vote. The widespread claims of the Democratic Party that voter ID is a suppression method shows an extreme disconnect between the voters and the politicians they elect, and also further shows an intense ignorance of the reality of minorities across the country. Implying that minorities are incapable of obtaining an ID is ridiculous; most Americans have the knowledge and means to obtain ID either in-person or through the Internet and saying that minorities are unable to do so demonstrates a lack of understanding the reality on the ground. Studies have shown that in states where voter identification is implemented, 85-95% of voters possess some form of valid ID. In addition, most states, like Georgia, provide IDs at extremely low costs or for free.
Claims that the bill also restricts the amount of time for individuals to be eligible for voting are similarly wrong; a careful reading of the bill indicates that in most counties, more time is available to vote than before. Georgia provides 17 days of in-person early voting, and the bill adds two optional Sundays to vote, meaning 19 days of early voting. By comparison, New York provides 9 days, and Colorado, the same state where the MLB relocated their All-Star Game in protest of the bill, has 15 days and excludes Sundays. This most certainly does not look like a reduction in voting hours for Georgian voters. In addition, Colorado has much stricter rules regarding voter ID and identical rules to Georgia regarding conduct by party officials.
There is a widespread belief that this bill actually bans poll workers from giving out water or other essential items to people in line, but this is a deliberate mischaracterization; the language in the bill states that those members of political parties or those employed by campaigns are unable to give voters gifts or other items as an attempt to buy their vote, and does not prevent poll workers from handing items out. The same exact law exists in Colorado as well. Finally, Georgia has been accused of preventing people from voting past 7 p.m. — once again this is incorrect. Just like anywhere else in the nation, once a voter is in line, they are allowed to cast a ballot, no matter what, and cannot be prevented from doing so. Despite all of the assertions that this bill is a power grab and suppresses minority turnout, the actual text of the bill does not seem to indicate such, and most certainly cannot be compared to Jim Crow laws, as many politicians and activists are asserting.
The Conversation is an Opinion column written by two students of opposing political viewpoints, used to discuss current events from different perspectives. It is currently written by Jackson Hudgins ‘23 and Peter White ‘23.
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