Thread by @ChristinaPushaw

Today, there was an election in the country Georgia, which became independent from the USSR 30 years ago. GDP is $16 billion, more than 1000 times less than the USA’s. Average yearly income is ~$2,000. Yet EVERY voter is REQUIRED to show photo ID. & no one has a problem with it.

So if you think it’s too “expensive” or “complicated” to get an ID here… voters in foreign countries, far less privileged than any American, are able to navigate MORE bureaucratic systems than ours. No one complains about voter ID because they don’t want to be accused of fraud.

PS: Georgians only have one Election Day — they do not have weeks of “universal early voting” and there’s no vote-by-mail. Mobile ballot boxes are brought to homebound people on E-Day. COVID is there too, but it didn’t change the basic parameters of election administration.

The great irony, of course, is that the US Department of State sends hundreds of Americans to observe Georgian elections (I’ve done it in the past, which is how I know this). The State Dept then publishes a report on whether or not that country’s election was free and fair 😀

And guess what? If the American election observers notice that Georgian poll workers are NOT checking voters’ IDs, the US State Department will publicly criticize the Georgian election administration for insufficient election security.

One last fact: The official language of all state institutions is Georgian. ID cards are in Georgian. 10% of the population of Georgia are ethnic Armenian or Azerbaijani, who speak completely different languages. They still manage to get IDs and cast their votes in elections.

That’s not to say Georgian elections are totally clean. They aren’t, mostly because a lot of voters are intimidated, coerced, or bribed into voting a certain way. It’s not that different from how Democrats campaign here 😞. But it’s still *worse* here because of lax Voter ID.

This is the most surreal part of the past ~18 months for me. Until 2020, I did political consulting in former Soviet countries & witnessed a lot of messed-up things, which I attributed to the legacy of communist dictatorship. But last year I saw the same — & worse — in the USA 😳