Some good news from Ari Berman:
“Today the Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia,” Attorney General Merrick Garland announced at a press conference at the Justice Department headquarters.The lawsuit challenges a number of provisions of the law, including a ban on election officials sending unsolicited mail ballot request forms to voters, a shorter period of time for voters to request absentee ballots, new voter ID requirements for mail ballots, restrictions on the number of mail ballot drop boxes, a ban on giving out food and water to voters in line, and throwing out provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct.
Gov. Brian Kemp has said “there is nothing Jim Crow” about the Georgia law, enacted in March, but it includes 16 different provisions that make it harder to vote and that target metro Atlanta counties with large Black populations.Advertise with Mother Jones
The lawsuit is being overseen by Kristen Clarke, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and Vanita Gupta, the associate attorney general—two longtime civil rights lawyers with extensive records litigating against new restrictions on voting.
The Georgia law, known as SB202, appears to have been part of a coordinated national effort by conservative activists to make it harder to vote in states across the country. The dark money group Heritage Action for America bragged in a leaked video to donors in April, first reported by Mother Jones, that the Georgia law had “eight key provisions that Heritage recommended,” including several targeted by the Justice Department lawsuit.
In a speech earlier this month, Garland said he would double the number of lawyers in the department’s voting section to scrutinize new laws making it harder to vote. Still, litigation against new voter suppression laws faces an uphill battle against a conservative-dominated judiciary.
The Supreme Court’s 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act means that states with a long history of discrimination—including Georgia—no longer need to get their voting changes approved by the federal government. Since that decision, 26 states have enacted new restrictions on voting, according to an analysis by Mother Jones published on Friday. Garland said Friday that if not for that Supreme Court ruling, “it is likely that SB202 would have never taken effect.”
It is a welcome move but these things take time and there are few guarantees so it’s unlikely it will positively affect the 2022 election which features the all-important Warnock race.
And the election subversion and voter nullification stuff that happening all over the country isn’t being addressed yet, which is very disturbing. The next two elections are going to be very dicey. And keep in mind that even if the Democrats succeed beyond all expectations at getting out their vote, the way the right has framed their narrative means they will take that huge turnout as proof that the Democrats engaged in voter fraud and use their new laws to overturn the election. It’s a real heads we win, tails you lose situation.
They have convinced their voters that it is impossible for them to lose.
Remember: