I’ve been hearing a lot of dooming from left-wingers on Twitter about how Georgia is now safe red because of a voter suppression bill (and yes, I will objectively call it that, why the hell can’t people give out water to people waiting in line to vote) so I thought I’d write about this. It’s Monday night and I’ve been slacking off with regards to Substack, but here goes.
First of all, over the past 10 years, the Georgia Republican Party has consistently been closing down polling places in the Atlanta city, especially in majority black neighborhoods, meaning they’ll have to drive/walk further to vote and be forced to wait longer. This is political, of course - African-Americans are the most solid voting bloc in the country for the Democratic Party, and the more they turn out, the better of a night it’s likely to be for team blue.
-The bill also allows unlimited challenges to the legitimacy of an individual’s voter registration.
-It makes it harder to vote by mail - to do so, you’ll have to provide your drivers’ license or your state ID number. So if you don’t own a car and, like 99% of other people, don’t have a clue what your state ID number is, mail-in voting gets a heck of a lot more difficult and can wipe the possibility out for many.
-The bill bans third-party groups (cough cough Stacey Abrams) from sending absentee-ballot APPLICATIONS to voters. You read that right. If Stacey Abrams is trying to get someone to vote, her organization can’t send you an absentee ballot application. You have to go through the process yourself.
-And it eliminates portable polling locations.
Now, this makes voting difficult, especially for minorities in larger cities like Atlanta or Savannah or Columbus. But the Georgia Democratic Party isn’t helpless, and if the Senate passes the For the People Act (which is possible if Manchin moves towards nuking/reforming the filibuster, which is already in the process of happening), this probably won’t have an effect.
So is the bill bad for Democrats? Yeah. But it’s not as bad as you think, and it changes nothing.