Thread by @davidalanlevine

Yesterday, GA adopted a massive overhaul of elections that raises a number of potential concerns. Below is a copy of the full bill thanks to @stphnfwlr as well as some of my more extensive thoughts on it. documentcloud.org/documents/2052…

1/The bill removes the Secretary of State as the State Electoral Board chair. What message does it send if an election official who upholds the integrity of his state's elections is rewarded with death threats, a primary opponent who supports the big lie, and a bill like this?

2/The bill prohibits mobile voting except for emergencies. Why? While mobile voting is great for emergencies, it's also a great, secure option for early voting and takes pressure off of election day. I saw this firsthand when I worked for @AdaElections.

3/It makes dropboxes a permanent fixture in GA elections, which is a good thing, but it doesn't call for enough of them. Having one for every 15,000-20,000 voters is consistent with best practices. eac.gov/sites/default/…

4/It smartly allows election officials to process absentee ballots sooner, but it also requires counting ballots nonstop once polls close, which could impact the accuracy of vote counting if workers get too tired. Election officials may need to recruit more workers in response.

5/It appears to give state legislators greater ability to intervene in the administration of local elections, regardless of how an election is actually conducted. It's hard to see how this further fosters impartial election administration.

6/As @grace_panetta notes, voters now need to submit a driver's license/ID number to apply for a ballot and 1 of those numbers or the last 4 digits of their SSN on the ballot envelope, rather than a signature. Is there actual evidence that GA signature matching was problematic?

7/The recent Cobb County audit went well, and if there are minor issues or one-offs, that would seem to support tweaks to the procedures for verifying signatures and/or notifying voters about a mismatch, rather than a wholesale change to the process.

8/The bill essentially includes a ban on private funding for elections, which would be fine if there was a guarantee that governments could adequately fund elections, but as we know from #election2020, no such guarantee exists.

9/Instead it was private monies that helped ensure that many election officials could administer #election2020 as successfully as they did. If there was rampant misuse of private funds, that could potentially justify this action, but no such evidence has been unearthed to date.

10/And making it a misdemeanor for merely giving food and water to voters waiting in line is beyond the pale. Its bad enough when voters have to wait in hours-long lines. This adds insult to injury.

11/It is important to note that there are some good provisions in this bill. For example, early voting will now be expanded in many places and the deadline for requesting absentee ballots now aligns with guidance from the USPS.

12/Unfortunately, the justification for too many provisions in this bill is flimsy at best, resting on some combination of mis- and/or disinformation. That's never a good basis for making any decisions, let alone changes to election processes.