In Georgia, suppression may weaken the will to vote
Outrage over the new Georgia voting law is warranted. It’s an overt suppression scheme — aimed at Black voters, specifically, and overall turnout, generally. But before we give much more oxygen to the measure’s red herring — criminalizing distribution of food and water to people in long lines at the polls — let’s highlight its dangerous core: allowing elected officials to manipulate election outcomes.
An authoritarian handbook couldn’t have delivered a more effective strategy.
Under the law, ostensibly enacted in response to a “significant lack of confidence in Georgia election systems,” the secretary of state no longer is chair of the State Election Board; that statewide elected official will be replaced by a “chairperson elected by the General Assembly.” The board issues regulations governing elections, investigates fraud allegations and — significantly — sets the rules on “what constitutes a vote and what will be counted as a vote.”
The Republican-majority legislature, no doubt, was inspired to write this section by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s failure to reconsider the 2020 presidential election’s outcome — despite intense pressure to do so from a fellow Republican, the defeated President Trump.
Counties in Georgia, as in most states, hold great power. They register voters, maintain voter lists, conduct all of the ballot casting and then certify elections. Appoint someone who is too biased and put them in charge of a county election office and, suddenly, the fox is guarding the hen house. Registration purges become heavy-handed, applications are put “on hold,” recounts take place on shaky ground. And all these actions affect outcomes, potentially shifting the result of a close race.
Supporters of Georgia’s new statute may say: “Look, don’t worry, because the law restricts the state board from suspending any more than four county supervisors.”
But in the last election, seven of the 10 counties that swung the most heavily toward the Democrats in the entire country (compared with 2016) were in metro Atlanta.
So, permission to control the elections in a majority of the state’s pivotal counties means the GOP-dominated board will be close to controlling the whole election. The choice of four counties was no accident.
Voter suppression in Georgia already relies on a bevy of tools to shape outcomes before they occur: strict ID laws, voter registration purges, shuttered polling places, partisan gerrymandering and unrestricted campaign contributions, to name only the most prominent.
After the last election, the evidence-free lawsuits didn’t work, the calls for outcome flips went unheeded and the Capitol remained intact. So, when all else failed, it was time for the losers to start rewriting the rules.
This latest tactic is especially powerful.
Whereas strict ID requirements — and other blatantly racist measures — often backfire by driving record numbers to the polls, some other laws force voters to question whether the process itself is legitimate and so whether they should bother participating.
Why show up when the system is stacked against you? When your ballot could get tossed on a political whim? A citizen who feels powerless is a non-voter. And that’s the most effective way to suppress the vote.
Federal legislative fixes are essential, but they won’t solve the problem alone. Lawmakers must be reminded that tables turn, and manipulative rules like those now on the books in Georgia can come back to haunt them.
And when that happens, parties don’t just implode. Democracy as a whole self-combusts.
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat is the president of the U.S. Vote Foundation, a nonprofit that works to ensure that all citizens become voters.
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