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Kemp signs new Georgia voting rules into law ahead of presidential
election
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CNN —
Georgia's Republican Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday signed into law new
rules for challenging voters' eligibility along with a measure that
would make it easier for an independent candidate to qualify for the
presidential ballot — provisions that could shape the outcome of fall
elections in this key battleground state.
The Republican-controlled state legislature passed the measures in
late March. Kemp did not issue a statement about his decision to sign
the changes into law.
The ACLU of Georgia said it would sue to block the new rules, which
its executive director Andrea Young called a "step back for voters'
rights and voting access" in the state.
Under the new law, "any political party or political body" that has
obtained ballot access in at least 20 states or territories can
qualify for Georgia's presidential ballot.
That could benefit third-party or independent presidential candidates
in a state that Joe Biden narrowly carried over Donald Trump in 2020.
Currently, independent or third-party candidates must collect at least
7,500 signatures from registered Georgia voters to qualify for the
ballot in the state.
Other measures change voting procedures.
They include a provision that broadens what constitutes "probable
cause" needed to uphold challenges to voter registrations. It would
include evidence that a voter has died, obtained a homestead exemption
on their taxes in a different jurisdiction or registered to vote at a
nonresidential address.
Since the 2020 election triggered widespread false claims of voter
fraud in Georgia, individual activists in the state have lodged tens
of thousands of voter eligibility challenges. A 2021 Georgia law
stipulated that a single voter could bring an unlimited number of
challenges, and election officials in some large counties were
inundated with demands to remove voters from the rolls during the 2022
midterms.
Critics say the new law could burden election officials with
unnecessary work and fuel meritless attacks on voter qualifications,
by targeting, for instance, someone who lives at the same address as
their business. It also allows the use of a US Postal Service change-
of-address database in bringing challenges, although it cannot be the
sole basis for canceling a voter's registration.
Voting rights groups have long argued that change-of-address data does
not establish that someone is no longer eligible to vote in a state
because college students, people with vacation homes and members of
the military, for instance, may opt to temporarily receive their mail
at another, out-of-state address.
The new Georgia law also requires homeless people to use the county
registration office as their voting address — instead of the place
they have found shelter. Opponents say that could make it harder for
unhoused people to cast ballots because their voting precincts could
end up being a long distance from where they are living at the time of
the election.
The head of Fair Fight, a voting rights group founded by former
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, called the law "voter
suppression."
"Everything the GOP is doing is about the 11k votes Biden won by in
2020-they're focused on finding ways to shave off votes they don't
like to win & creating the conditions to overturn results they don't
like," the group's CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo wrote on X.
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