Thread by @douglasblackmon

So you’re asking if I actually can explain how the new Georgia voting law discourages voting, especially in minority & lower income communities and sets up ways for the legislature and exec branch to tamper with elections the way President Trump tried? Okay, if you insist.
1/17

https://twitter.com/bandphan/status/1378765683165704197

—The most dangerous part of the Georgia voting law is that it removes from the State Election Board the vote of the Secretary of State—even though under Georgia Constitution, the Scty of State oversees elections. It also puts the board under the control of the legislature. 2/17

And the election board can suspend and replace any local election official basically anytime they want, for just about any reason—like having an honest election. 3/17

If that had been the law in November, a state board controlled by the Republican legislature would have been able to do exactly what President Trump illegally wanted—firing election officials in counties, like Clayton, Dekalb and Fulton, that voted big for Biden... 4/17

...And then sending in carpetbaggers to declare fraud where there was none, and fraudulently throw out thousands of African-American votes.

5/17

And yes there are even more ways that the new voter suppression law is designed to make voting harder in Georgia:
You can still vote absentee for any reason, but now it’s illegal for officials to send absentee applications to every voter.

6/17

The law also reduces how much time a voter has to request a ballot, and blocks any organizations that help people get absentee ballots. It also requires every absentee voter to jump through extra hoops that a voter at the polls does NOT have to.

7/17

The new law sets up requirements for early voting—like not allowing it after 5 pm—that make it harder for working people to vote. It also eliminates mobile voting stations, except in an emergency—like hurricanes or alien invasion—and only if the governor says to do it.

8/17

Also puts huge limits on local officials allowing extra “drop boxes” for absentee ballots, another way of increasing the odds of long long lines at the regular polls.

9/17

Altogether, the law’s discourage absentee voting and make early voting less effective. The intent seems to be causing much much longer & slower lines at the polls, which, again, will mean large numbers of working class, elderly, and sick voters who just give up and go home. 10/17

And if anybody who comes along to offer a battle of water or a Ritz cracker to a voter getting thirsty or tired? Well, as everyone has heard, now that simple, kind gesture will be a crime, thanks to our state elected officials.

11/17

Bottom line: Georgia had an incredibly close & fair election, in which officials—most of them Republicans—did a great job encouraging every legal voter to vote. Almost 5 million people voted—the most ever—and Joe Biden surprisingly won by a tiny <12,000 margin.

12/17

There was NO evidence of voting fraud, and barely even any apparent human error. The only thing that supposedly “went wrong,” was that the losing party was sore that it lost the presidential election and two US Senate seats.

13/17

Why did the Republicans lose the presidential vote in Georgia? And the Senate slots? Primarily because 1000s of women in the suburbs & smaller cities who had been solid GOP voters were disgusted by Donald Trump’s lunatic comments, denials, and lack of concern about COVID.

14/17

Why did they also vote against the two GOP senators? Because many Republican voters had grown nauseated with the ethical failures of GOP elected officials as they went along with President Trump ignoring reality as the virus killed more than 500,000 Americans.

15/17

Finally, there was one other reason Republicans lost those three races: first, their candidates were deadly uninspiring. So they ran the ugliest, often blatantly racist, kinds of campaigns—exactly what was already turning away thousands of GOP voters.

16/17

They lost because the election correctly reflected that by a tiny margin, the majority of people in Georgia didn’t want Trump, Perdue or Loeffler. That’s the only reason Georgia’s election law was changed—to make it possible to prevent an outcome the ruling party dislikes.
17/17