Democrats Lying About Georgia Voting Law As Excuse To End Legislative Filibuster

FUZZY SLIPPERS MAR 27, 2021 7:44 PM

Georgia was at the center of a storm of controversy concerning election integrity following the 2020 presidential election. In an attempt to regain its citizens’ confidence in elections, Georgia passed—and Governor Brian Kemp signed into law—the Election Integrity Act of 2021.

Democrats are now seizing on this common sense approach to ensuring election integrity as the new ‘Jim Crow’ in order to push through their own, vastly unpopular anti-election integrity bill.

The new reforms, according to Heritage Action, include the following:

• Protecting absentee voting by requiring voter ID, not automatically sending request forms or ballots to all registered voters, printing ballots on security paper so they can be authenticated, prohibiting ballot trafficking by political operatives, and strengthening supervision of absentee ballot drop boxes.
• Promoting the integrity of the election process by prohibiting private funding of election officials and government agencies.
• Increasing the accuracy of voter registration lists.
• Increasing transparency by allowing election observers complete access to the election process and requiring the ballot-counting to continue without pause until all votes have been tabulated.

People on the right look at this Georgia law and are appalled that such common sense rules were not already in place.

People on the left, up to and including Joe Biden, look at this and screech “Jim Crow!”.

The New York Post reports:

President Biden on Friday called a new Georgia election law “Jim Crow in the 21st century,” likening its provisions to racially discriminatory laws cast aside in the 1960s.The reforms passed by Republicans and signed Thursday by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp impose new rules on absentee voting — including requiring a photo ID and shortening the absentee voting window — in addition to other changes that conservatives say will improve election integrity.Democrats allege that the bill will constrict voting, particularly among poorer and African American voters, who helped Biden carry the state in November by fewer than 12,000 votes. Democrats also narrowly won a pair of Senate runoff races in January, giving the party effective control of the upper chamber of Congress.“More Americans voted in the 2020 elections than any election in our nation’s history. In Georgia we saw this most historic demonstration of the power of the vote twice — in November and then again in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate seats in January. Recount after recount and court case after court case upheld the integrity and outcome of a clearly free, fair, and secure democratic process,” Biden said in a statement.“Yet instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or winning campaigns on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote.”Biden continued: “Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over. It adds rigid restrictions on casting absentee ballots that will effectively deny the right to vote to countless voters. And it makes it a crime to provide water to voters while they wait in line — lines Republican officials themselves have created by reducing the number of polling sites across the state, disproportionately in Black neighborhoods.”“This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century. It must end,” he said.

Like Republicans being “literally Nazis” and white people being born and then bred racists because they are born white and white privilege and systemic racism and stuff, this Jim Crow smear of anything with which the left disagrees is met with the eye rolls and raised eyebrows of the center and center-right, with the disgust and disdain of the right, and with the slathering bobble-headed-nodding devotion of the increasingly ludicrous left.

One might imagine that Biden, who claimed in his disastrous first presser since becoming president that he “came to the US Senate 120 years ago,” would be more well-versed in the long-abandoned Jim Crow laws.  One would be, obviously, wrong.

In fact, Democrats, starting with Biden, appear to be positioning to use the Georgia voting integrity law to pass their dream package of anti-American voting ‘reforms’ that will have the opposite effect of the Georgia law; the Democrats’ wishlist will undermine election integrity, undermine American confidence in elections, and yes, even, to use their own inaccurate term to describe America’s Constitutional Republic, undermine ‘democracy.’

ABC News reports:

Democrats have seized on new voting restrictions in Georgia to focus attention on the fight to overhaul federal election laws, setting up a slow-building standoff that carries echoes of the civil rights battles of a half-century ago.. . . . H.R. 1 is vast, and its Senate counterpart would confront the new Georgia law by expanding voting by mail and early voting, both popular during the pandemic. It would more broadly open ballot access by creating automatic voter registration nationwide, allowing former felons to vote and limiting the way states can remove registered voters from the rolls. It also addresses campaign financing and ethics laws.

North Carolina Rep. Destin Hall (R) provides an overview of H.R. 1 (via the Heritage Foundation):

• Seize the authority of states to regulate voter registration and the voting process by forcing states to implement early voting, automatic voter registration, same-day registration, online voter registration, and no-fault absentee balloting.
• Make it easier to commit fraud and promote chaos at the polls through same-day registration, as election officials would have no time to verify the accuracy of voter registration information and the eligibility of an individual to vote and could not anticipate the number of ballots and precinct workers that would be needed at specific polling locations.
• Hurt voter turnout through 15 days of mandated early voting by diffusing the intensity of get-out-the-vote efforts; it would raise the cost of campaigns. Voters who vote early don’t have the same information as those who vote on Election Day, missing late-breaking developments that could affect their choices.
• Degrade the accuracy of registration lists by requiring states to automatically register all individuals (as opposed to “citizens”) from state and federal databases, such as state Departments of Motor Vehicles, corrections and welfare offices, and federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the Department of Labor, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the Department of Health and Human Services. This would register large numbers of ineligible voters, including aliens, and cause multiple or duplicate registrations of the same individuals and put federal agencies in charge of determining a person’s domicile for voting purposes (as well as that individual’s taxing state).
• Constitute a recipe for massive voter registration fraud by hackers and cyber criminals through online voter registration that is not tied to an existing state record, such as a driver’s license. It would make it a criminal offense for a state official to reject a voter registration application even when it is rejected “under color of law” because the official believes the individual is ineligible to vote.
• It would also require states to allow 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to register; when combined with a ban on voter ID and restrictions on the ability to challenge the eligibility of a voter, this would effectively ensure that underage individuals could vote with impunity.
• Require states to count ballots cast by voters outside of their assigned precincts, overriding the precinct system used by almost all states that allows election officials to monitor votes, staff polling places, provide enough ballots, and prevent election fraud.
  Mandate no-fault absentee ballots, which are the tool of choice for vote thieves. It would ban witness signature or notarization requirements for absentee ballots; force states to accept absentee ballots received up to 10 days after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by Election Day; and require states to allow vote trafficking (vote harvesting) so that any third parties—including campaign staffers and political consultants—can pick up and deliver absentee ballots.
• Prevent election officials from checking the eligibility and qualifications of voters and removing ineligible voters. This includes restrictions on using the U.S. Postal Service’s national change-of-address system to verify the address of registered voters; participating in state programs that compare voter registration lists to detect individuals registered in multiple states; or ever removing registrants due to a failure to vote no matter how much time has elapsed.
• It also would substantially limit the public release of voter registration information, making it almost impossible for nonpartisan organizations to verify the accuracy of registration rolls, and prohibit states from using undeliverable election mail as a basis for challenging a registrant’s eligibility.
• Ban state voter ID laws by forcing states to allow individuals to vote without an ID and merely signing a statement in which they claim they are who they say they are.
  Violate the First Amendment with respect to a vast range of legal activity. Voter intimidation or coercion that prevents someone from registering or voting is already a federal crime under the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act. But H.R. 1 would add a provision criminalizing “hindering, interfering, or preventing” anyone from registering or voting, which is so vague and so broad that it could prevent providing any information to election officials about the ineligibility of an individual, such as an applicant not being a U.S. citizen
• Expand regulation and government censorship of campaigns and political activity and speech, including online and policy-related speech. H.R. 1 would impose onerous legal and administrative compliance burdens and costs on candidates, citizens, civic groups, unions, corporations, and nonprofit organizations. . . .
• Reduce the number of Federal Election Commission members from six to five, allowing the political party with three commission seats to control the commission and engage in partisan enforcement activities.
• Prohibit state election officials from participating in federal elections and impose numerous other “ethics” rules that are unconstitutional or unfairly restrict political activity, eliminating the ability of the residents of specific states to make their own decisions about what rules should govern their state government officials.
• Require states to restore the ability of felons to vote the moment they are out of prison regardless of uncompleted parole, probation, or restitution requirements. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment gives states the constitutional authority to decide when felons who committed crimes against their fellow citizens may vote again. Congress cannot override a constitutional amendment with a statute.
• Transfer the right to draw congressional districts from state legislatures to “independent” commissions whose members are unaccountable to voters. H.R. 1 would make it a violation of federal law to engage in “partisan” redistricting and mandate the inclusion of alien population, both legal and illegal, in all redistricting. This is an anti-democratic, unconstitutional measure that would take away the ability of the citizens of a state to make their own decisions about redistricting.
• Authorize the Internal Revenue Service to engage in partisan activity. H.R. 1 would permit the IRS to investigate and consider the political and policy positions of nonprofit organizations before granting tax-exempt status, thus enabling IRS officials to target organizations engaging in First Amendment activity with disfavored views.
  Limit access to federal courts for anyone challenging H.R. 1.
• The bill would prohibit the filing of any lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of H.R. 1 anywhere except in the District Court for the District of Columbia and would allow the court to order all plaintiffs and intervenors, regardless of their number (such as all 50 states), “to file joint papers or to be represented by a single attorney at oral argument,” severely limiting the legal representation and due process rights of challengers.
• Establish a “Commission to Protect Democratic Institutions” that would threaten the independence of the judiciary. H.R. 1 defines “democratic institutions” as those that are “essential to ensuring an independent judiciary, free and fair elections and the rule of law.” The commission would be given the authority to compel judges to testify and justify their legal decisions, threatening their independent judgment and subjecting them to political pressure and harassment.

You can read the text of H.R. 1 here.

Democrats are treating the Georgia Election Integrity law as a “crisis.”  And they do not intend to let it go to waste.

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