Voices of the American establishment, from celebrities to corporate executives, have recently been raised in condemnation of the state of Georgia for the recent overhaul of its voting laws.
While some of the criticism is based on false information, the main objection relates to voter identification—a measure long opposed by the Democratic Party.
The Georgia law expands voting options, such as early voting and ballot drop boxes, beyond the status quo, and is more permissive in some regards than some Democratic strongholds, such as New York. The core integrity measure at issue appears to be the demand for voters to provide identification in order to cast a ballot not only in person, but also as an absentee.
While voter ID laws are common in Republican-leaning states, they don’t necessarily extend to absentee voting. Georgia set up the requirement after the massive increase in absentee voting in the 2020 general election.
States such as Georgia commonly offer voter IDs to people who lack one for a small fee or even free. But one usually needs several documents for such a process, such as a utility bill, Social Security card, and birth certificate. The last item in particular can be hard to obtain for some people since the national birth certificate system was only instituted in 1946. Before that, a lot of people never received one.
In Wisconsin, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for years litigated on behalf of one such person, Ruthelle Frank, who tried to obtain her birth certificate, but was told her name was spelled wrong in the records. It would have cost her some $200 and a bureaucratic procedure to have the mistake corrected, which she considered unfair. The state’s voter ID law withstood the challenge, although the ACLU managed to force the state to accept more forms of ID for voting.
The published data don’t break down how many belonged to either category. An accompanying release says that “most of the people who said they did not vote because they lacked ID actually possessed a qualifying form of ID.
“The survey found considerable confusion about the law,” the release said.
If Wisconsin voters were poorly informed about what ID is acceptable, Georgia may be in a different boat. It’s had voter ID laws on the books since the 2008 election and managed to generate significant publicity about its current expansion of the ID requirement to absentee voting.
No Free Food
The Georgia law also expands the state’s ban on electioneering outside polling places to ban the distribution of any gifts, including food and drinks, to people in line. The apparent intent was to prevent the use of food and drinks as a form of undue influence on voters.But it would also prevent a charitable individual from offering water to people who sometimes need to wait several hours to vote. Voters would need to bring their own food and water, although the law allows poll officials to set up unattended water fountains for people waiting in line.