Washington Wednesday: Georgia’s new voting laws

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REICHARD: Next up on The World and Everything in It: new rules for voting this year.

Many states led by Republicans put new procedures in place for this year’s election. They said the idea was to safeguard elections and voters’ confidence in the integrity of those elections.

But Democrats claimed the changes were actually designed to suppress turnout among minority voters. Which was a case President Biden tried to make.

BIDEN: It is the most pernicious thing. This makes Jim Crow look like ‘Jim Eagle.’ This is gigantic!

Alright, well, ground zero in this fight is Georgia. Democratic activists even pressured Major League Baseball to move the 2021 All-Star game out of Atlanta because of the voting changes.

But Georgia this year recorded record-high early voting. More than 2 million Georgians cast a ballot before Election Day. And turnout among black voters also set a new record in the state.

Joining us now to talk about the voting changes, and what difference they’ve made is Mark Caleb Smith. He’s a political science professor at Cedarville University, a Christian college in Cedarville, Ohio.

REICHARD: Good morning, professor. Welcome back.

SMITH: All right. Good morning, it's always a pleasure to be with you.

REICHARD: Let’s talk first about Georgia. What changes to the voting system there led to the Democrats’ uproar?

SMITH: So good number of changes took place in

Georgia. What changes to the voting system there led to the Democrats’ uproar?

SMITH: So a good number of changes took place in Georgia. A few just quickly, poll hours can now only be extended by a superior court judge and not by a lower level judge. It limits the use of mobile voting unless there's a gubernatorial declaration of emergency. Probably the one that got the most attention is it prohibits anyone from handing out water to those who are in line to vote as long if they're within 150 feet of a polling place. But it does allow poll workers to hand out water if they choose to do that. It did limit the number of drop boxes for ballots for absentee ballots as well. And maybe most critically, in some ways, it requires an enhanced verification process for absentee ballots. So that's just a smattering. I mean, Georgia had a pretty widespread set of changes, but those were probably the highlights.

MR: Given all that, what do you think is behind the record early turnout in Georgia?

SMITH: Well, I think it would have to be the interest in the election mean, we're looking at turnout levels that we would sometimes more commonly associate with the presidential election. As you said in your introduction, last number, I saw 2.5 million people who voted early in Georgia, almost 750,000 of those are African Americans. And we even saw a pretty significant increase in young voters from 18 to 29. So turnout has been high, at least for early voting. But I think it would be incorrect to assume that the laws in Georgia had no effect. I mean, because we really don't know what the turnout could have been had those laws not been put in place. But if the laws were really punitive and coercive and designed to oppress turnout, we can at least say say they failed to do that.

MR: A group connected to Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia, Stacey Abrams, sued to block the voting changes in the state. But the courts have sided with the state. And it seems to me the common thread is that changes to the voting process in red states has held up under legal scrutiny, correct?

SMITH: Yeah, that's right. I mean, we would see these laws come under scrutiny if they were in clear violation of the 14th amendment in the Constitution, or if they were in violation of the Voting Rights Act from 1965, or its various amendments. But we really didn't see to my knowledge, any of those changes come under severe scrutiny from the courts for those kinds of violations. And so, while red states maybe did take measures into account that would make it a little harder to vote at the margins, none of those rose to the level really of being discriminatory, at least in a legal sense.

MR: Okay, what changes have we seen to voting rules in other states? What effect have those had?

SMITH: A pretty wide range, as you were saying before, a good number of red states have put changes in place. Some of those dealt with early voting decisions. So Iowa, for example, reduced early voting from 29 days before the election to 20 days before the election. As in Georgia, some states have gotten a little bit stricter with their signature verification process. In Arkansas, for example, voters have to add additional information to their signature. And so it could be a driver's license number could be social security number or other personal information that could then be matched to them.

I think as a political scientist, perhaps maybe the most potentially troubling set of changes. In some states, there have been changes that would maybe allow partisanship to enter into the process more directly. And so sometimes Secretaries of State are being pulled back in their power, and maybe more partisan groups like election boards are having more power. So in Arkansas, for example, complaints now go to the state board of elections, as opposed to county prosecutors, and those are the ones that I think I'm going to keep the most eye on to see where disputes are settled, how they're settled, and whether we can still be confident these elections are as neutral as they can be, and hopefully as bipartisan as they can be.

MR: Mark, do you think voters who doubted the integrity of the last election will be satisfied with the rules red states put into effect this go round?

SMITH: You know, I really don't think so. I hate to say that, but I really don't think so because I think a lot of the dissatisfaction or suspicion surrounding the last election was rooted in maybe misunderstanding. In some situations. For example, there's a misunderstanding about how and in what order votes are counted. And so people who vote on the day of the election, their votes typically get counted first, and then early, or absentee ballots get counted next. Well, that that process is much more time intensive, it takes much longer. And so given the fact that we've had close elections, and we've seen a rise in early voting, or absentee vote voting, it shouldn't surprise us that there's a delay in counting. But some people have read that to mean that it's opened up the process for fraud. And I'm not convinced that that's necessarily true. And so I'm worried that even though red states have done a good job, I think on the whole of trying to nail down their election laws, I'm not sure that'll be sufficient for a lot of voters.

MR: I know some blue states have moved to make voting a lot easier … and to make some of the pandemic-related measures permanent. Mark, talk about changes in blue states.

SMITH: We probably haven't seen as many dramatic changes, for sure. But I think two things that we have noticed is there's an increase in the amount of states that offer what we call ‘no excuse absentee ballots’. And so if you simply request one, then you can be given an absentee ballot. That's the case in 26 states. And so that's a high that we haven't seen before. We've also seen some states like Virginia, expand their use of drop boxes. So you can take those early ballots and turn them in in multiple different ways and multiple different places, which in theory should make it easier for people to vote. But on the whole, in the blue states or bluish states, we might say, not nearly as many changes.

MR: Okay, final question having to do with early voting across the county. Do you think we’re moving more toward a system where elections could potentially be decided before Election Day?

SMITH: Yeah, we may be getting closer to that, which is a really interesting trend, I think. Right now 45 states plus the District of Columbia allow for early voting, and the numbers of early voters continues to increase pretty dramatically. In Pennsylvania, for example, you can vote up to 50 days before the election takes place in Minnesota, it's 46 days. And so a lot of people are casting ballots a month and a half or more before the election takes place. I understand the upside of that - it's convenient and makes it simpler for some people, especially if they have a jam packed schedule. The downside is sometimes you're casting your ballot before you know some key, critical information. And so a good number of Pennsylvanians, for example, cast their ballot for the Senate contest. Before that pivotal debate took place between Oz and Fetterman. You know, as a voter or potential voter in Pennsylvania, I'd have liked to have seen that debate before I cast a ballot. And so I think there are a lot of benefits potentially to early voting, but maybe some downsides as well.

REICHARD: For sure. Mark Caleb Smith from Cedarville University. Professor, thanks so much!

SMITH: Thank you.

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