The Georgia senate voted today to roll back no excuses absentee voting and make it harder to cast an absentee ballot for any of those still qualified. This wasn’t something they did for the pandemic and now they are going back to normal. They had no excuses absentee voting for 15 years:
Any registered voter has been allowed to cast an absentee ballot without having to give a reason since 2005 under a bill passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly. Georgia is one of 34 states that doesn’t require an excuse to vote from home, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
If the bill becomes law, about 2.8 million of Georgia’s 7.7 million registered voters would remain eligible to vote by absentee ballot, Dugan said.
State Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, said efforts to reduce voting access in SB 241 are based on perceptions, ignoring the reality that the presidential election was accurate.
“The purpose of 241 and all of the vote-limiting bills we have before us is to validate a lie. It is to prevent massive voter turnout from happening again, especially in minority communities,” Merritt said. “Don’t find yourselves on the wrong side of history.”
But state Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, said lawmakers needed to respond to the concerns of their constituents.
“When an election result is not believed, when people believe results have been tampered with, the people can lose faith in their government,” Brass said. “We still need the people of Georgia to believe in the process, and right now they are unconvinced.”
The extreme fatuousness of that bullshit excuse cannot be overstated. Trump lied about losing the election over the vociferous objections of all the local Republican election officials so in order to “restore confidence” they have to make it much harder for Democrats to vote.
My fervent hope is that despite the fact that they still allow their voters over 65 to cast absentee ballots, that their onerous requirement for driver’s licences and ID will create difficulties for those voters too. It’s not like old white people are any better at jumping through these insane hoops than old Black people are.
Republicans should burn in hell for this abject bullshit. They know that what they are saying is ridiculous but it isn’t going to stop them. They will hang on to power by any means necessary.
Update: Oh look, another one
Four months after Iowans voted in record numbers, Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed legislation cutting the state’s early voting period and closing the polls an hour earlier on Election Day.
The Iowa Legislature approved the measure and sent it to Reynolds’ desk late last month. Every Republican present for debate in the House and Senate voted for the legislation. Every Democrat voted against it. Reynolds, a Republican, signed the law Tuesday.
II wonder if they voted to close the polls an hour earlier because of Trumps INANE insistence that the results must be announced by midnight on election night — presumably ensuring that any votes not counted by then should be thrown away.
WTF???