Georgia Law Restricting Ballot Traffickers From Filling Out Your Application Goes To Trial
Two provisions in Georgia’s 2021 election integrity law will be on trial in federal court beginning April 15, as part of a long effort by the left to dismantle election security in the Peach State.
Georgia’s Republican-led legislature passed SB 202 — the Election Integrity Act of 2021 — following the 2020 election. The case was brought by VoteAmerica, the Voter Participation Center, and the Center for Voter Information. VoteAmerica was previously funded by Democracy Builders Fund, whose founder former Obama adviser Seth Andrew was later charged with “stealing funds from his own charter school network in 2021,” according to Influence Watch.
On trial Monday are two provisions of the election law, one which says absentee ballot applications cannot be prefilled with information about the voter and another that says “all persons or entities … that send applications for absentee ballots to electors in a primary, election, or runoff shall mail such applications only to individuals who have not already requested, received, or voted an absentee ballot in the primary, election, or runoff.”
In September, Judge J.P. Boulee granted the state summary judgment on the questions of whether the law was inappropriately broad and whether it violated the plaintiffs’ freedom of association. He denied their request for summary judgment on whether the provision violates plaintiffs’ right to free speech, so the parties will take up that issue in his courtroom on Monday.
Other leftist groups have launched seven other pending lawsuits challenging the election integrity law.
This Isn’t the First Democrat Attack on SB 202
Dozens of corporations like Major League Baseball, Delta Airlines, and Patagonia boycotted the state of Georgia after Democrats waged a smear campaign against Republicans over the election law. President Joe Biden called the policies “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.” Many of these attacks hinged on the false assumption that requiring voters to show an ID to prove they are who they claim to be is “voter suppression.”
But despite the hysteria, voter ID laws are quite common — in fact, Georgia already had a voter ID law in place for in-person voting, as at least 35 other states do. The new law simply extended the voter ID law to absentee ballots.
At the time the legislation was passed, about 200,000 Georgians — less than 3 percent of the state’s adult population — lacked a driver’s license or state identification card, according to CNN. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time that 97 percent of registered Georgia voters had an accepted form of ID “on file with the secretary of state’s office.”
Georgia residents can receive a free ID card from the state by simply going to their county registrar’s office and providing proof of residency and other documentation such as their social security number and proof of citizenship. Voters who choose to vote via absentee ballot can either provide their ID or verify their identity using the last four digits of their Social Security number.
Another false claim was that the legislation would end voting hours early. However, the law actually expanded in-person early voting dates and hours for most counties.
“It’s sick. It’s sick,” Biden said. “Deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work.” The White House then put out a written statement reiterating the false claim.
“Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over,” it warned.
Even for The Washington Post’s “fact checker” Glenn Kessler, this claim was so preposterous it earned four Pinocchios.
“Not a single expert we consulted who has studied the law understood why Biden made this claim, as this was the section of law that expanded early voting for many Georgians,” he wrote. The Post confirmed the new law permits polling places to remain open until 7:00 p.m. during early voting, which is “the same as Election Day in Georgia,” and that voters who are in line by 7:00 p.m. may still cast a vote.
The year after the legislation was passed, roughly 800,000 Georgians cast an early, in-person ballot — three times the number of early in-person votes cast in 2018 and higher than in 2020, The Washington Post reported.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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