As the Crow flies
Democrats have been tarnishing Georgia’s new voting law, saying it represents a return to Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a heinous system that denied Black Americans—and many poor whites—their constitutional right to vote through bogus “literacy tests,” poll taxes and other measures such as “whites only” Democratic primaries in states where Democrats were sure to win.
Backed by racist law enforcement and threats of violence or lynching by the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups, even Black people who were able to vote often chose not to. It took the civil rights revolution, and especially the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to undo this system.
The new Georgia law does nothing to return the state to this terrible time. Black voters will still be able to register without hindrance. And they, like all other Georgians, will be able to vote in many different ways: on election day, in-person before election day, or by mail without an excuse if they are 65 or older.
Democrats charge that some of the law’s provisions will have a differential impact on Black voting and thus demonstrate prejudicial intent. These provisions include requirements that voters present a photo ID when voting in person and that those voting by mail provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.
Photo identification: Democrats have long resisted the requirement on the theory that some voters without driver’s licenses or other state-issued IDs could be disenfranchised. But as progressive elections analyst Ruy Teixeira points out, studies regularly show that photo ID requirements have not reduced turnout. Georgia’s law also permits voters to ask for a free voter-ID card if they don’t have one of the six permitted forms of photo ID.
The new mail-in ballot measures are also not likely to depress turnout. Black voters already prefer to vote in person, either early or on election day. Seventy percent say they voted in-person in the 2020 presidential election. Moreover, the law’s new security measure, which replaces the old system of using a person’s signature to verify absentee ballots with a requirement that absentee voters provide a driver’s license or state ID card, will likely decrease the chance that valid ballots are wrongly rejected. That’s a good thing that everyone should cheer.
The changes to Sunday early voting will also not likely have any effect. Despite Democratic claims that Georgia’s after-church “souls to the polls” early voting initiatives drove turnout, data from the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 5 Senate runoffs showed that Sundays were the least popular days to vote in both races.
Georgia’s new law also mandates an extra Saturday of early voting and allows counties the option of allowing early voting on Sundays. Voting experts say the bill expands early voting access, the opposite of Democratic claims.
No bill is perfect, and reasonable people can disagree about the balance between voter access and election integrity. But Democratic claims that this law amounts to racist voter suppression should be seen for what they are: overwrought partisan rhetoric that unnecessarily increases racial and political tensions.