Voting Rights Roundup: GOP passes Georgia’s most far-reaching voting restriction law since Jim Crow

The GOP’s new law excluded some of the most extreme proposals to restrict voting such as measures to eliminate automatic voter registration and the ability of voters under age 65 to vote by mail without an excuse, and it includes a few provisions that could expand voting access, but a far larger number of measures restrict access to voting and give Republicans greater partisan control over election administration itself. The new law includes provisions that:

• Require voter ID for requesting and returning an absentee ballot by mandating that voters include their ID number or a photocopy—officials would use the ID number to verify voters’ identities, which some election officials argued was less secure than the current signature-verification process;
• Set the deadline for requesting absentee ballots at 11 days before Election Day instead of three while also preventing counties from mailing out ballots until four weeks before Election Day, which risks some voters not getting their ballots on time;
• Allow online absentee ballot requests;
• Ban election officials from mailing out unsolicited absentee ballot request forms to all voters after Raffensperger did so in the 2020 primary;
• Penalize third-party groups that send unsolicited absentee ballot requests if doing so includes any voters who already requested a ballot;
• Significantly limit absentee ballot drop boxes by requiring they be located inside of early voting locations, making them only available during regular business hours, and capping the number of drop boxes at whichever is the fewer of one per every 100,000 active registered voters or one per early voting site in each county;
• Allow election officials to start preparing absentee ballots for counting two weeks before Election Day to ensure a timely count;
• Standardize early voting days and hours across counties during primaries and general elections by expanding availability in many small rural counties that are heavily white and conservative but limiting availability in larger counties that are diverse and Democratic-leaning;
• Sharply reducing early voting in general election runoffs by cutting the two weeks of runoff early voting down to just five business days and no weekends; this will particularly affect Black voters, who are disproportionately likely to use weekend voting days;
• Ban mobile voting buses that are currently allowed for early voting;
• Require large polling places servicing precincts with more than 2,000 registered voters that experience wait times of longer than an hour to add more voting machines or be split into multiple sites; this provision doesn’t appear to require similar action to relieve long lines in smaller precincts;
• Ban people other than poll workers from giving food and water to voters waiting in line;
• Disqualify voters from voting in the wrong polling place but in the right jurisdiction unless they show up specifically after 5 PM on Election Day and sign a statement saying they couldn’t make it to their assigned precinct in time;
• Allow Georgians to initiate an unlimited number of challengers to voters’ eligibility, which a right-wing voter suppression group unsuccessfully tried to do to tens of thousands of voters last year, and give challenged voters very little time to defend themselves;
• Limit the secretary of state’s powers by removing him from chairing the state Board of Elections and replacing him with a legislative appointee as chair, additionally enabling GOP lawmakers to take greater control over local election boards on the pretext that they are “underperforming;”
• Bar local election officials from directly receiving grant funding from private philanthropic organizations to help pay for election administration after many counties did so in 2020;
• Shorten the runoff period for federal general elections from nine weeks to four weeks and adopt instant-runoff voting for military and overseas voters to ensure that doing so doesn’t conflict with federal law that requires absentee ballots be sent to overseas voters no later than 45 days before any federal election date; and
• Replace all-party primaries in special elections with regular party primaries.

Quickly after Kemp—who himself owes his position as governor to his victory in a 2018 election that was badly tainted Kemp’s own efforts to suppress voters and abuse his powers while overseeing his own election as secretary of state—signed the law, Black voter advocates launched a federal lawsuit that challenges the provisions that:

• Add voter ID requirements for absentee voting;
• Limit drop boxes;
• Ban mobile voting locations;
• Bar officials from sending unsolicited absentee applications;
• Enable mass challenges to voter eligibility;
• Sharply limit out-of-precinct voting;
• Ban giving food and drink to voters in line; and
• Shorten runoffs from nine to four weeks.

It’s unclear just how effectively these provisions will deter Black voters and Democrats from voting as Republicans undoubtedly intend. However, the provisions giving Republicans greater control over election boards could give the GOP another way to subvert fair election outcomes even if they fail to keep enough voters from casting their ballots by simply giving the GOP the power to disqualify ballots outright. The GOP could take over multiple boards in the several highly populated counties in the Atlanta area and other major cities that are home to a disproportionate share of the state’s Democratic and Black voters.

This law taken together with Hice’s primary challenge against Raffensperger means Georgia could be heading into the 2024 elections with Republicans firmly in control of election administration who openly support Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 election and who openly supported overturning Joe Biden’s victory. Republicans failed to steal the Georgia elections from Democrats in 2020, but if the extremist wing of the GOP gets their way, such an attempt may yet succeed in the next presidential election unless the courts or Democrats in Congress intervene.

Redistricting

● Redistricting: Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project has created an interactive map graphic illustrating which states are most at risk of running into major problems with legally mandated redistricting deadlines conflicting with the Census Bureau’s announcement that the release of the data needed to conduct redistricting has been delayed six months to potentially Sept. 30. Several state constitutions require mapmakers to pass new districts as soon as this summer, and Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, New York, and Ohio are most at risk for congressional redistricting.​

Campaign Action

​● Colorado: Colorado’s new independent redistricting commissions—one for Congress and another for the state legislature—are now taking public comments ahead of the start of the redistricting process later this year. Members of the public have the ability to propose districts using Dave’s Redistricting App, which is a free online app.

● Illinois: Illinois Democrats face a potentially impossible-to-meet June 30 deadline under the state constitution to pass new legislative districts even though the census delayed the release of the relevant population data until late September, so Democratic lawmakers now say they are considering using alternative data estimates such as the census’ American Community Survey to draw new districts on time.

If Democrats fail to pass legislative maps by June 30, a bipartisan backup commission would take over the process and give Republicans a fifty-fifty chance to gerrymander the legislature in this blue state by winning the expected game of chance to select the commission tiebreaker. Congressional redistricting is a separate process that operates on a different timeline.

● New Mexico: Right before adjourning, New Mexico’s Democratic-controlled legislature has almost-unanimously passed a bill that would create a bipartisan advisory redistricting commission to propose maps for lawmakers to consider when devising new districts for Congress, the state legislature, the state Public Regulation Commission, and the state Public Education Commission. The bill now goes to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has not yet weighed in on it.

The bill would establish a commission with seven members, with four chosen by the leadership of both parties in each of the state’s two legislative chambers, two unaffiliated members selected by the state Ethics Commission, and a final seventh member named by the Ethics Commission who would be a retired appellate judge and would serve as commission chair. No more than three commissioners could be members of the same party, and anyone who is or has served as an officeholder, candidate, or lobbyist (or whose close family members have) in the two years prior to redistricting could not participate.

Commissioners would devise three proposals for each type of office and hold public hearings to discuss them. The criteria in order of priority would require that districts must be drawn to:

• Have equal population for population as closely as possible for Congress and no more than a 2% deviation for state legislature;
• Not split precincts;
• Adhere to the federal Voting Rights Act and its protections for voters of color;
• Only elect one member each;
• Be “reasonably compact;” and
• Preserve communities of interest, local government jurisdictions, and Native American communities “to the extent feasible.”

Mapmakers may also consider preserving the cores of existing districts but cannot use partisan data except to comply with federal voting rights protections, which would prevent them from drawing maps explicitly with partisan fairness in mind. Mapmakers ostensibly cannot consider incumbents’ residences, but an exception that allows them to avoid pairing incumbents in the same districts makes that restriction relatively easy to circumvent. The bill also lets mapmakers use alternative “credible” population data sources in addition to the census.

Despite numerous media reports erroneously calling the commission “independent,” it doesn’t actually have the power to enact proposed maps into law. Instead, the commission may only propose maps for lawmakers to consider, but legislators can nevertheless amend the proposals or reject them entirely and draw their own maps from scratch. The bill says nothing about imposing the same criteria on maps drawn by the legislature that it does on the commission, thus leaving the door open for Democrats to gerrymander this decade, though the risk of sparking a backlash by rejecting the commission’s maps could deter Democrats from passing extreme gerrymanders.

● Montana: Republicans have passed a bill out of state Senate committee that would effectively gerrymander the Montana Supreme Court by switching from nonpartisan statewide elections to elections using districts drawn by GOP legislators, which state House Republicans previously passed. In previous editions of the Voting Rights Roundup, we had incorrectly referred to this legislation as a constitutional amendment because it would need voter approval in 2022 to take effect, but the proposal is only statutory.

● Ohio: A federal district court has dismissed Ohio’s lawsuit that seeks to require the Census Bureau to release the population data needed to conduct redistricting by the original March 31 deadline instead of the census’ postponed Sept. 30 deadline, prompting Ohio officials to appeal to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Voting Access Expansions

● Delaware: State Senate Democrats have passed a bill in a committee to adopt automatic voter registration.

● Hawaii: A committee in Hawaii’s Democratic-run state House has unanimously passed a bill establishing automatic voter registration through Hawaii’s driver’s licensing agency, which the Democratic-controlled state Senate previously passed unanimously. Another bill that the same House committee passed earlier this month to expand in-person vote centers also includes a provision that requires that people on parole and probation be given voting information including a notification that they have regained their voting rights upon release from prison.

● Illinois: State Senate Democrats have passed a bill that would permanently authorize absentee ballot drop boxes and curbside voting for mobility-limited voters, extending those measures after their temporary adoption last year due to the pandemic. The bill, which also requires absentee ballots to be accepted even if they lack postage, now goes to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker for his expected signature.

● Iowa: Iowa’s Republican-run state House has unanimously passed a constitutional amendment that would automatically restore voting rights to people who have served all terms of their sentences for felony convictions. Currently, Iowa is one of just a few states where state law imposes a lifetime voting ban for any felony offense unless the governor individually restores their rights, and only a 2020 executive order by GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds automatically restores the rights of most people who’ve finished their sentences.

However, the GOP also passed a separate bill over Democratic opposition that would enact a de facto poll tax by requiring people who have fully served their sentences to pay off any court-mandated restitution to crime victims before regaining their rights, and it would also limit the types of crimes that are eligible for automatic rights restoration. People convicted of sex crimes would have to complete any special sentences before regaining their rights, and those convicted of murder and manslaughter would have to individually petition the governor to restore their rights.

House lawmakers passed a similar amendment in 2019 only for Senate Republicans to refuse to take it up. If both chambers pass it this year or next, they would have to pass it again after the 2022 elections before it could go before voters in a 2024 referendum.

● Maryland: State House Democrats have passed a bill that would permanently expand absentee ballot drop boxes, adopt an improved system for letting voters track the status of their absentee ballot, and require a process for notifying voters and letting them fix purported problems with their absentee ballots. House Democrats also passed another bill to require drop boxes inside prisons for voters who still remain eligible and also require officials to give voter registration forms to people upon release from prison.

● Montana: A committee in Montana’s GOP-run state House has unanimously passed a bill to require satellite election offices on Native American reservations during election periods to comply with a 2014 legal settlement.

● Nevada: As promised last month, Nevada Democrats with the support of Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson have introduced a bill that would make universal vote-by-mail permanent for all future elections after Democrats passed a law adopting it last year only for emergency situations such as the pandemic. This latest bill also shortens the deadline for mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be received by officials in order to count from seven days after Election Day to four days instead—though it’s unclear why this voting limitation was included—and requires election workers to take a class on signature verification.

● New Jersey: Both chambers of New Jesey’s Democratic-controlled legislature have passed a bill creating an in-person early voting period, which Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has said he supports. The bill establishes 10 early voting days for November general elections, six days for presidential primaries, and four days for other primaries.

Democratic legislators also passed another bill that sets minimum requirements for absentee ballot drop box locations. Each county would be required to set up at least 10 drop boxes, with at least one box in every municipality with an average family income at or below 250% of the federal poverty line, which in 2021 would cover any locality with an average household income of roughly $66,250.

● New Mexico: Shortly before New Mexico’s regular legislative session ended, the Democratic legislature almost-unanimously passed a bill to expand voting access for Native Americans, which includes among other provisions a requirement that every reservation or other Native community have an in-person polling place.

However, state Senate Democrats failed to approve a bill that House Democrats had passed that would have ended felony voter disenfranchisement for voters on parole or probation and left only those in prison unable to vote. Democrats also failed to pass a bill approved in a state Senate committee that would have lowered the voting age to 17 in state and local elections.

● Virginia: Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam has signed three bills passed by the Democratic legislature to expand voting access, including measures to:

The Sunday early voting law and absentee witness law take effect on July 1, but the pre-registration law doesn’t take effect until Oct. 1, 2022. Northam has until Wednesday to take action on the remaining voting bills passed in the most recent legislative session.

● Washington: Washington state Senate Democrats have passed a bill to end the disenfranchisement of any voter convicted of a felony who isn’t currently incarcerated, meaning that thousands of people on parole, probation, and who owe court fines or fees despite having fully served their sentences will all regain the right to vote as soon as Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signs the bill as expected.

Voter Suppression

● Arizona: State House Republicans have passed a bill in a committee that would enact a voter ID requirement for absentee voters by requiring voters to fill out an affidavit including either their driver’s license or state ID number, or alternately their voter registration number and a copy of a utility bill; state Senate Republicans have already passed the bill. Earlier this month, state House Republicans also passed a bill that would require groups registering more than 25 voters per year to register with the state, which voting advocates have claimed could lead to some registrations being rejected.

● Florida: Republicans have passed a bill in a state House committee that would enact several new voting restrictions but does back away from one of the more extreme proposals recently endorsed by Republicans in a state Senate committee.

The House GOP’s bill would eliminate a policy originally enacted by Republicans that lets voters make a single request to receive an absentee ballot for every election in two consecutive federal election cycles, instead requiring voters to make a request with each election cycle. However, the House bill would grandfather in the requests made in 2020 for the 2022 cycle instead of retroactively cancelling them like the Senate GOP’s bill would.

Furthermore, House Republicans’ bill would require that a voter’s mail ballot signature match the most recent signature they’ve used instead of the more extensive history of their voter signature. Leon County Elections Supervisor Mark Early had recently testified that this policy would violate a court mandate from previous litigation.

While the House bill wouldn’t outright ban absentee ballot drop boxes like the Senate version would, the House’s bill would limit drop boxes only to active early voting locations and county election offices during their hours of operation, which is a departure from current law allowing drop boxes at any location that could serve as an early voting site even if it isn’t actually used for early voting. The bill would also require people dropping off ballots at drop boxes to show ID proving that they live at the same address as the voter or are a relative, banning other parties such as a trusted friend or neighbor from returning someone else’s ballot on their behalf.

Finally, House Republicans just like their brethren in Georgia (see our Georgia item above) would make it illegal to give food or water to voters waiting in line to vote in-person, which combined with the provisions making it harder to vote by mail could increase the odds that voters in hours-long lines simply give up on voting entirely.

● Michigan: On Wednesday, GOP legislators unveiled dozens of bills intended to make it more difficult to vote, but since Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is almost certain to veto many of these proposals if Republicans pass them, the GOP also launched a scheme to circumvent Whitmer’s veto power. If GOP activists gather just over 340,000 voter signatures for a ballot initiative to enact new voting restrictions, Republicans could use the gerrymandered legislative majorities that they won despite Democrats getting more votes to simply pass the proposals into law without a voter referendum needed and with Whitmer unable to veto them.

The GOP’s proposals include measures that would:

• Create a strict voter ID requirement by ending the ability of voters who lack an ID to sign an affidavit swearing to their identity and cast a regular ballot, instead requiring that they be issued a provisional ballot that risks not getting counted if the voter doesn’t present ID within six days of the election;
• Extend the voter ID requirement to absentee ballot requests;
• Give bipartisan county election board members veto power over the ability of the secretary of state, who is currently Democrat Jocelyn Benson, to determine where absentee ballot drop boxes are established;
• End the use of drop boxes at 5 PM on the day before Election Day instead of when the polls close on Election Day;
• Ban the secretary of state and local election officials from providing prepaid postage for absentee ballots;
• Prohibit the secretary of state from sending unsolicited absentee ballot applications to all voters after Benson did so in the 2020 primary;
• Require voters when registering to attest that they don’t have the right to vote in another state, even though that is allowed under federal law for people who split their time residing in multiple states so long as they don’t actually vote in multiple locations in any given election;
• Ban election officials from accepting private contributions to fund election administration;
• Require legislative approval for state executive officials such as the secretary of state to be able to spend federal funds for election purposes and return any funding to the federal government that legislators don’t appropriate within 90 days;
• Require ballots to print the full text of ballot measures instead of just a summary, which could dramatically lengthen ballots and the time it takes voters to read and cast them. This could both exacerbate long voting lines and deter those who don’t want to read through pages of text from voting on such measures; and
• Enact a raft of changes to laws governing who may participate as an election observer and poll watcher.

While Michigan’s atypical system of letting legislators pass proposed ballot initiatives without the possibility of a veto means the GOP could try to enact several of these policies into law, their adoption and implementation isn’t guaranteed.

Critically, Democrats gained a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court in the 2020 elections, and the new Democratic court majority could use the voting access protections under the state constitution to strike down new voting restrictions, including the protections that voters approved in a 2018 ballot initiative that greatly expanded absentee voting in the first place. Leading Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias already responded to the news of these bills by implying that his firm could file a lawsuit to challenge them if adopted.

Furthermore, the state constitution limits ballot initiatives to addressing a single subject, meaning the GOP may be limited in how many different voting policies they can include in any single petition if the courts rule that their scope is too broad, necessitating the gathering of more signatures if they try to attempt multiple initiatives instead.

● Missouri: State House Republicans have passed a new voting restriction bill that would:

• Reinstate the GOP’s voter ID requirement after the state Supreme Court gutted most of it last year;
• Ban election officials from making changes to election procedures within six months of a presidential election like officials did to temporarily expand voting access last year amid the pandemic; and
• Prohibit officials from counting absentee ballots until Election Day ballots are counted, which Donald Trump used in the few states where Republican legislators had manufactured similar delays in vote-counting as a pretext to spread conspiracy theories about bogus voter fraud in 2020.

● Montana: State Senate Republicans have passed a bill that ends Election Day registration by cutting off the registration deadline on the day before Election Day. The bill goes back to the state House after Senate Republicans made amendments, but once the two chambers agree on a single version, it will go to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte for his expected signature.

Meanwhile, State House Republicans have passed another bill implementing a stricter voter ID requirement, including a revived provision that bans using college student IDs unless students have a supplemental form of ID, which Republicans had previously removed in committee to avoid sparking a lawsuit. Republican senators already approved a similar version of the bill, but both chambers must agree on a final version before it goes to Gianforte.

● West Virginia: State Senate Republicans have passed a bill with almost all Democrats voting against it that would enact major new restrictions on voting. The GOP’s bill would critically repeal the state’s automatic voter registration law, the implementation of which Republicans have repeatedly delayed ever since the GOP-run legislature adopted the law in 2016 as a compromise with Democrats that also included a loose voter ID requirement.

The bill also shifts the early voting calendar up by removing the last four days of the early voting period and instead adding them to the beginning of the early voting calendar, thus setting the end of early voting on the seventh day before Election Day instead of the third day. This change eliminates the final Saturday, Friday, Thursday, and Wednesday of early voting before Election Day, which have historically been the most popular days.

Finally, Republicans’ bill would institute what may be the most draconian system for purging voter registrations of any state in the country by directing officials to remove voters who fail or refuse to vote in any two-year federal election cycle if they don’t update their registration or respond to a single notification mailer. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority legalized this practice in a 2018 Ohio ruling in spite of the plain intent of federal law prohibiting eligible voters from being purged simply for not voting, but other GOP states have required a longer four-year period for failing to vote before the purge process may begin.

Ballot Measures

● Arizona: Republicans have passed a constitutional amendment in a state Senate committee that would raise the threshold needed for voters to approve a ballot initiative from the current simple majority to 60%. Meanwhile, the GOP passed a separate constitutional amendment in a state House committee that would require two-thirds voter approval for initiatives that raise taxes (though no supermajority would be required to cut taxes).

These proposals come in the wake of successful recent efforts by voters to use initiatives to increase the minimum wage and raise income taxes on the rich to fund public education, both of which would have failed to pass had the supermajority requirements been in effect. Senate Republicans have already passed the amendment relating to tax increases, and the amendment implementing the 60% threshold has already passed in the state House.

● Utah: Republican Gov. Spencer Cox has signed a new law that bans ballot initiative backers from paying petition signature-gatherers based on the number of signatures they collect, instead mandating that they be paid on an hourly basis or not at all. This move comes after activists used ballot initiatives in 2018 to try to reform redistricting, expand Medicaid, and legalize medical marijuana, all of which GOP lawmakers subsequently undermined via later legislation. Opponents argue that the bill would destroy the incentive for paid petition circulators to try to gather as many signatures as quickly as possible.

Electoral System Reform

● Wyoming: Wyoming’s Republican-run state Senate has rejected by just a single vote a bill that would have adopted primary runoffs if no candidate had won a majority for federal and state offices beginning with the 2024 election cycle.

Senate Elections

● Kentucky: Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear has vetoed a bill that requires the governor to fill future U.S. Senate vacancies with an appointee belonging to the same party as the departing senator by mandating that the governor choose an appointee selected from a short list of names given to him by the departing senator’s party committee. Republicans easily have enough votes to override the veto.