Election Integrity Act of 2021

Originally known as Georgia Senate Bill 202, the Election Integrity Act of 2021 was signed into law by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on March 31, 2021, and went into effect on July 1, 2021. The law overhauls how future elections will be handled in the state, making voting more restrictive, especially in Democrat-leaning urban and suburban counties.

Among other restrictions, the Election Integrity Act of 2021 requires voter identification on absentee ballots and limits the use of ballot drop boxes. During the 2020 US presidential election, people throughout the country opted to vote by absentee ballot due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

The bill is part of a nationwide effort by Republicans to make the country’s voting laws more restrictive following an unsuccessful attempt to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s defeat of incumbent President Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election. During the election, Biden won the state of Georgia, along with several other key states, and won both the Electoral College and popular vote by a wide margin.

The bill has been harshly criticized for unfairly suppressing the votes of African Americans and other people of color because it makes voting challenging in the areas in which they live. President Biden dubbed the act "Jim Crow in the twenty-first century,” and lawsuits have been filed by civil rights organization claiming that the law is discriminatory and unconstitutional because it negatively affects non-White voters.

Background

In Georgia, a swing state in the 2020 presidential election with sixteen electoral votes, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden narrowly defeated Republican president Donald Trump by 11,779 votes. Voter turnout in Georgia during the presidential election was record-breaking, with more than five million votes cast. Because of COVID-19, more than three million Georgians voted early and more than one million voted via absentee ballot.

Biden’s victory in Georgia, a traditionally "redstate from the former Confederacy, was a major upset for the Republican Party. Black voters played a key role in the Democratic win and also helped to elect Ralph Warnock, the state’s first Black senator. After losing his second term bid, President Trump falsely claimed voter fraud in Georgia and other states, and began to make repeated and baseless claims that Biden’s victory was illegitimate. After unsuccessfully trying to overturn Biden’s victory, Republican lawmakers drafted the Election Integrity Act of 2021, which restricted voter access in urban and suburban counties in the state, home to mostly Democratic voters. Republican Governor Brian Kemp stated the bill was necessary because of unresolved questions about whether the election in Georgia was conducted fairly. In early 2021, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who strongly defended the integrity of the election in Georgia despite Trump’s claims of election fraud, threw his support behind the bill saying that the changes were necessary to safeguard future elections.

Republican lawmakers in the state faced significant backlash because of the bill. Major companies in Georgia, such as Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, criticized the Election Integrity Act of 2021, and Major League Baseball (MLB) pulled its All-Star game from Atlanta that year. As of May 2021, various civil rights groups had filed lawsuits, claiming that the Election Integrity Act of 2021 was discriminatory and unconstitutional, including the New Georgia Project; Georgia State Conference of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Sixth District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, and Vote America.

Overview

One of the most controversial aspects of the Election Integrity Act of 2021 is the change in legislative control of election administration. Under the current law, election management decisions, including voter eligibility and the disqualification of ballots, are made by county boards. The new law allows the State Board of Elections to replace any county board it feels is performing poorly. It also gives the state legislature more control over the State Board by replacing the Secretary of State as its chair with an official appointed by the state legislature. The state legislature already appoints two of the five seats on the board, so this enables it to appoint a Republican majority of the board, which could change the outcome of future elections, especially if they are as close and contentious as the 2020 presidential election was.

Other aspects of the law that restrict voter turnout by making it more difficult to cast votes include the following:

• A substantial reduction in the number of drop boxes per county. Under the new law, only one drop box per one hundred thousand voters is allowed. (Absentee ballots are often submitted in drop boxes.) In Fulton County, where many of the employees of Microsoft live, this is an 80 percent reduction in the number of drop boxes. Furthermore, according to the new law, the use of drop boxes must conclude four days before an election.
• A requirement of identification (ID) for absentee voters. The bill requires absentee voters, those who drop off or mail in ballots, to submit their driver’s license number or state ID number as part of their vote-by-mail application. Voters who do not have either form of identification must submit a photocopy of an acceptable form of identification, such as a passport.
• A shorter time to request an absentee ballot. The Election Integrity Act shortens the length of time that voters have to request an absentee ballot by more than half. It also bans the use of mobile voting centers.
• A removal of the option of casting a provisional ballot if a voter arrives at the wrong polling center. In the past, voters who mistakenly arrived at an incorrect polling location were allowed to cast a provisional ballot. Such a ballot is set aside to verify eligibility. Under the new law, voters who arrive at an incorrect polling facility must travel to the correct precinct.
• An allowance of more challenges to voters’ eligibility. The new law allows any citizen of Georgia to file an unlimited number of challenges regarding voters’ eligibility. This gives authorities more opportunities to disqualify Democrats.
• An elimination of food and water offered to voters waiting in lines at polls. As part of a ban on giving voters gifts and money, the act makes it illegal for volunteers to give people water or food while they are waiting in line to vote within 150 feet (46 meters) of polling locations and 25 feet (7.6 meters) of voting lines. Critics contend that the longest voting lines are in poorer areas, which are mostly Democratic.

Since the 2020 presidential election, the suppression efforts in Georgia have been emulated in other states. Measures to limit mail-in voting were subsequently enacted in states such as Ohio, Arkansas, and Wyoming. Nonetheless measures to increase accessibility to mail-in voting have been undertaken in as many as 17 states. In addition to mail-in restrictions, other obstacles have been put into place to influence the outcome of elections. These include gerrymandering, or the illegal mapping of electoral districts to ensure favorable outcomes for a single political party. The extent of gerrymandering in states such as North Carolina and Texas resulted in litigation that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Other forms of voter suppression include constant changes in voting rules and contrived or manufactured incidents of voter fraud disseminated by media of questionable credentials. Not least of which are increased incidents of physical intimidation where vigilantes stand watch over polling stations in attempts to scare voters from participating in elections.

Bibliography

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