And some of them come from above.
Both President Joe Biden, a Democrat who opposes the law, and Georgia Government Brian Kemp, the Republican who signed it last week, misrepresented the text of the law this week.
Here is an outline of a Biden assertion and three Kemp assertions.
Criticizing Georgia law in a Wednesday interview on ESPN, Biden said: “Would you close a polling station at five o’clock if working people just left? It’s about keeping workers and ordinary people I grew up with the fact that he could vote. “
Facts first: This is misleading for two reasons. First, the new law does not change Georgia’s election day, which is still ends at 19:00. Second, although the law sets a standard time of 17:00 for early voting on weekdays and on Saturdays, provinces have already been allowed under the previous law to end early voting at 17:00. The new law offers provinces the option to vote early at 19:00 if they wish.
The previous law said early voting on weekdays had to take place at least during ‘normal office hours’, with an option to add extra hours. That previous law did not explain what hours were qualified as ‘normal’. The new law does stipulate that the early voting must take place on the week between 09:00 and 17:00. This is not a reduction of hours, but only the removal of vagueness. And the new law further says that provinces can choose to extend early voting as early as 07:00 and as late as 19:00.
The new law also says that early voting must be at least between 09:00 and 17:00 on two Saturdays during the primary election and general election. (Additional weekends are optional.) This is an increase in compulsory weekend hours compared to previous legislation, which required only one Saturday of early voting from 09:00 to 16:00. Under the new law, provinces can go from 7 to 19 hours on weekends. if they want.
Atlanta’s Fulton County and a few other major Democratic-dominated counties did not have early voting hours later than 7 p.m. in 2020, so the law would not force them to reduce hours in the primary and general elections. (For by-elections, the law eliminates two weeks of mandatory early voting across the country and eliminates five weeks of the campaign in total.)
Press Secretary Jen Psaki defended Biden’s claim that Georgia’s polls would close at 5pm – versions he had previously made – by saying the new law puts an end to vote every day at 5. “But then Psaki conceded that the law ‘offers options to expand’ after 5pm
Here is a reservation. Even experts in the election law have told us that the wording of the new law is confusing especially about the early voting hours on the week. (You can read the wording yourself on pages 59 and 60.) But Kemp’s press secretary, Mallory Blount, told CNN that the law says that voting is allowed from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on a weekday; the Office of the Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, told CNN his attorneys interpret the provision in the same way; The professor of political science at the University of Georgia, Charles Bullock, said this is how he also reads it; and Joshua Douglas, professor of law at the University of Kentucky, an election law expert, said that although the wording is open to different lectures, the “stronger reading” is that it allows week extensions to 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.
However, Rick Hasen, a professor and electoral law expert at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said that because the weekday language is ‘not crystal clear’, he is concerned that there may be litigation if counties decide to go later than 5 p.m. . pm But he said he was glad Georgia leaders supported the broader interpretation.
The provision of food and water
In a Monday interview with Breitbart News, Kemp rejected criticism of a provision of the law that imposes restrictions on the handing over of food and drink to voters. (Some voters ran for hours in Georgia’s June 2020 and October 2020 early elections in Georgia.) He said, among other things: ‘It just keeps, you know, the NRA or Sierra Club or whatever even group interest – people who are candidates – to hand out food or water in the queue, so it is not as outrageous as people make it. ‘
In a Wednesday interview on CNBC, Kemp made an additional claim about the provision. He said voters could not only bring their own food and water, but that “people can serve and distribute bottles of water and food as long as they are outside the 150-foot limit of a polling station.”
Facts first: Both claims are misleading. While the law does say that people can not hand out or offer money or gifts, including food and drink, to voters within 150 feet of a polling station, it also says that people cannot do so ‘within 25 feet of any voter who vote to vote “- in other words, even if the voters are further than 150 meters from the building. And the restriction on the distribution of food and water does not only cover” special interest groups and eligible people. The provision states that ‘anyone’, not just a person engaged in an election, is prohibited from offering or offering money or gifts, including food and drink, within 150 meters of a polling station. within 25 feet of voters, or within the polling station.
The restriction on the distribution of food and drink is contained in the same paragraph as a provision restricting campaign activity, such as the recruitment of votes and the distribution of campaign material in the vicinity of polling stations. But the supply of food and drink does not only cover campers.
Kemp was right when he said in both interviews that the law allows provincial officials to provide water to voters. The law states that staff can set up ‘self-service water from an unguarded container’.
Select boxes
In an interview with Breitbart News and CNBC, Kemp suggested that it was inaccurate to say Georgia was taking the ballot boxes away. He explained that the law imposes a legal requirement that each country must have a subject box, while the subjects were optional in 2020 and only allowed under a temporary pandemic-related rule of the state election council.
For Breitbart, Kemp criticized the media coverage that made it appear “we’re loading them all into a truck and going to junk.” He said that ‘subjects have never been allowed in our state before [2020] election, and the only reason they did this election was because of an emergency for public health … what we do is put it in law. ‘
Kemp told CNBC: “Once the state of emergency for public health disappears, the fall box with them would have disappeared.” He added: “People are acting as if we are taking something away – it never existed until the pandemic, it was done by emergency rule, not by legislative action.”
Facts first: Kemp’s allegation is misleading because of another important omission. Even when printed by CNBC, he did not acknowledge that the law strictly limits the number of subjects per country – which will force some provinces to make far fewer subjects available than they made available in 2020. Fulton County, for example, say it will have to go from 38 subjects in the November election to eight.
Kemp is correct that the law cements cement bins in actual legislation, rather than allowing them to rely on the temporary pandemic order. He is also right that the new law requires every country to have at least one drop box. But his argument is incomplete at best if he refuses to explain that some provinces are banned from using the majority of the subjects they expelled last year. A reduction from 38 boxes under a temporary rule to eight boxes under a permanent law is still a reduction.
By law, provinces must have one drop box. But it adds that if they want additional subjects, they can have one for every 100,000 active registered voters in the country or one for every preselected polling station in the country, whichever is the smaller number.
The law also shortens the hours available there. Under the pandemic rule, booths can be located outside, open 24 hours a day and open until the evening of election day. According to the law, the boxes must be located at polling stations or within early polling stations and can only be available during the hours when early voting is available – again, a maximum of 7 to 19 hours, and only on certain days. (If the governor declares an emergency, the boxes can be placed outside.)
