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New voter registrations could make a difference in Georgia’s runoff | States of America
Can the US Senate elections in Georgia be decided by voters who were not registered on election day in November, but for the expiration?
States of America, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – As President Donald Trump continues to level unfounded claims of voter fraud nearly two months after his November 3 election loss, Republican lawmakers in states that have challenged Trump are pushing for new voting restrictions for future elections.
This includes proposals to repeal laws in Georgia and Pennsylvania that allow all registered voters to vote by mail – movements that could suppress the election according to civil rights and voting rights.
This comes after nearly 160 million Americans – the highest proportion of eligible voters in more than a century – voted in the November election won by President-elect Joe Biden, fueled by an increase in turnout amid the coronavirus pandemic. Americans cast 101 million ballots, making up 63% of the total vote, with Biden supporters dominating the 2 to 1 vote on Trump supporters.
“It is unfortunate that these legislators – some of whom actually put it in place and voted for it and worked on it – are now looking at an election result and deciding that they think it has not benefited them,” Amber said. McReynolds said. , CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute. “It’s the most destructive way to set up voting policies.”
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Trump has successfully tried to overthrow the election result in six battlefield states he lost, falsely claiming that the election was stolen from him, despite no evidence of systematic widespread fraud. Congress will meet on Jan. 6 to count Biden’s 306-232 victory in Electoral College.
Since the election, the Supreme Court has twice refused to accept lawsuits from Trump seeking to reverse the election results, and federal and state courts have rejected Trump’s allegations of voter fraud nearly 60 times.
In Georgia, which won Biden by 12,500 votes after two narratives, the Republican Caucus, the Senate, said its leaders intend to “reform our election laws” by enacting legislation to abolish voting without eliminate absentees who enable all voters to request a ballot by mail without it being necessary. n rede. When the legislature meets again, they also plan to propose a requirement for identifying photos and eliminating the elimination of mailboxes.
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In Wisconsin, where a Trump-led narrative also confirmed Biden’s victory, Republican lawmakers discussed proposals to tighten identification requirements for the absence of votes, ban clerics from filling in the addresses of witnesses on absent ballot papers and the limit opportunities to download ballots.
Republican lawmakers in Michigan have implemented measures to ensure voter access and remove ineligible voters from the voter list, reports the news agency Bridge Michigan. And in Pennsylvania, a Republican House of Representatives said it intends to pass legislation to repeal the new law without apology, which Republicans and Democrats worked on last year.
“You will probably vote fewer people if you place more restrictions on who can vote by post and who can not,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief councilor and senior deputy director for the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights under the law.
“It’s unfortunate that you have states that are considering going backwards in terms of reaching the vote. It’s a very cynical way of looking at the world if one of your goals is that you want fewer voters rather than more.”
Raffensperger advocates change in Georgia
Any changes to the voting laws by the Republican-controlled legislatures of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan will face possible vetoes if Democratic governors in those states object to them.
But Georgia, which dropped Democrats in the presidential race for the first time since 1992, is led by a Republican legislature and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Those dynamics made Georgia number 1 on the radar of voters.
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Since 2005, Georgia has had no excuse. But Republicans from the state Senate have promised to introduce legislation that would restrict email to seniors, the disabled and overseas and military voters only. Republicans’ photo ID requirement will reflect the state’s existing requirement for personal photo identification to vote.
“I do not think there should be different standards for the same process,” said Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan.
Both measures have the backing of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, who has angered Trump for backing down the president’s false fraud claims. Raffensperger said all Georgians could vote by post during the pandemic, dramatically increasing the burden on election workers.
“Asking provincial election officials to hold a vote-free vote against absent members, in addition to three weeks’ early, personal voting and the election on election day, is too much to manage,” Raffensperger said. “For the sake of our overwhelming and overwhelming election officials, we need to reform our absent voting system.”
Although the proposals will only apply to future elections, the voting restrictions for the January 5 U.S. Senate by-elections – which saw more than 2 million people vote early – are also being examined.
In a victory for Democrats, a federal judge in Georgia – Leslie Abrams Gardner, the sister of progressive leader Stacey Abrams – on Monday ordered two provinces to reverse a decision to remove 4,000 voters from the voter list. The judge ruled that the provinces relied improperly on unchanged address change data.
“I owe it to my constituents,” said the Pennsylvania lawmaker.
In Georgia, nearly twice as many Biden voters voted by post as Trump supporters. The difference was even greater in Pennsylvania, where nearly 2 million of the state’s 2.6 million voters – 77% – voted for Biden, compared to nearly 600,000 – 23% – for Trump.
This past year was the first time Pennsylvania has been able to vote for all voters after lawmakers from both parties along with Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, passed the law, known as Act 77, in 2019.
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Rep. Pennsylvania State Secretary Jim Gregory R-Hollidaysburg, who voted for the law, is now sponsoring legislation to repeal it. He said he did not do so because Trump lost Pennsylvania, but rather pointed to feelings of distrust among voters in his heavy Republican rural district.
“My constituents did not let me know in any uncertain way what they felt about the election,” said Gregory, whose district backed Trump by 73% to 27% in the election. He said they were convinced of fraud and irregularities, adding that ‘the thing that probably drew me the most’ is that some people told him they would never vote again.
‘And so I just feel like I owe it to my constituents to say I voted for Act 77, but for what I did not vote for, we have finally become the election product in Pennsylvania. And the product is what they have a lot of mistrust in. ‘
He blames the actions of Wolf, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The state Supreme Court upheld democratic measures to enable ballot papers to be received, ballot papers to be received three days after election day and not to require corresponding signatures.
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‘This is an accessibility issue’
Trump attacked the entries in the months before the election, saying it was full of fraud and claiming it favored Democrats, even though Republicans had a job advantage over Democrats in previous elections in many states.
Greenbaum noted that Georgia’s Republican leaders did not need a photo ID in 2005 to be absent, when the state passed a law requiring a person to vote in person. At the time, he said, Republicans generally voted by mail in larger numbers than Democrats.
“It all turned upside down,” he said. “It does not agree – after this 2020 election in which colored voters and Democratic voters would use more by vote – to now have all these restrictions all of a sudden.”
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Although Democrats nationwide voted more than Republicans in the vote, McReynolds said political red states such as Utah, Montana, Nebraska – where ballot papers were mailed to all or most registered voters – voted for Republicans in larger margins than in the past.
“It’s a matter of accessibility,” said McReynolds, who previously oversaw all post-election elections in Denver. “There are a lot of reasons to be absent, and it’s unfortunate that lawmakers want to put barriers in people if they’re just trying to cast their vote.”
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The pressure to change the voting laws among Republicans has extended beyond the states that Trump lost.
Republican lawmakers in Texas, according to the Texas Tribune, have filed nearly a dozen bills aimed at postal voting, illegal voting and the conduct of election officials. One bill would prevent officials from sending unsolicited applications to voters to request ballot papers.
Despite the flurry of proposals, McReynolds said she believes many states will seek to extend the vote to the record in 2020.
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One area has the chance for dual agreement in three states: change when absent ballots can be counted.
Prior to the election, lawmakers from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan refused to change their laws so that the settlement of absentee ballots could begin within weeks of election day, despite pleas from local election officials.
This has led to long delays in counting votes and releasing totals – a scenario that Trump used to falsely claim that ballots were ‘dumped’ out of nowhere overnight.
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Senator Devin LeMahieu, the incoming leader of the Senate, is working on legislation to allow election officials to count absentee ballots before election day.
He said he believed the new measures would “increase confidence in election results.”
Contributing Contributions: Associated Press and Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison.