‘Jim Crow in a suit and tie’: Outrage grows over Georgia’s new bills to restrict voting access

Georgia’s state legislature has moved forward with a sweeping set of bills to restrict voting access in the state, drawing accusations of voter suppression.

“We are seeing again and again this version of Jim Crow in a suit and tie,” voting rights activist Stacey Abrams told Mother Jones, “because it is designed explicitly for the same reason as Jim Crow did, to block communities of colour from active participation in choosing the leadership that will guide their democracy.”

On Monday afternoon, the Republican-controlled Georgia State Senate passed a bill that would eliminate “no-excuse” absentee voting except under a few specific circumstances. Meanwhile, the Georgia House of Representatives last week passed a set of bills that would reduce weekend voting days, end automatic voter registration, limit the use of ballot drop boxes, require ID to vote by mail, and make it illegal to give out food and water to people waiting in line to vote.

The Senate’s bill now heads back to the House for reconciliation. Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, has not said whether he will sign it into law.

Democrats say the voting restrictions are a backlash to Georgia’s most recent elections, in which Republicans lost the state in the presidential election and then both runoff Senate contests. The victories of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff meant the GOP lost control of the Senate.

“This is entirely driven by the existential crisis of a Republican Party that has decided that rather than adapt to the changing needs of the populace, it is easier to stop the people from participating,” said Ms Abrams, who ran as the Democratic candidate for Georgia’s governor in 2018.

Georgia Republicans say the bills are needed to prevent voter fraud.

"Republicans either stand for election security and integrity or they stand with Democrats," Debbie Dooley, an Atlanta Tea Party activist, told CNN. "The Republican base is united in this, and I dare Brian Kemp to veto a strong election security bill that comes to his desk.”

Critics charge that the bills target voters of colour, who tend to cast their ballots for Democrats. Weekend voting, for example, was used more by Hispanic, Asian, and African American Georgians in 2020 than by white voters, the Center for New Data found. Meanwhile, the share of Black Georgians who voted by mail went up by eight per cent in 2020, while the share of white voters-by-mail in the state went down by 12 per cent, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Under the bill passed by the State Senate, voters would not qualify for a mail-in ballot-- also called an “absentee” ballot-- unless they were 65 or older, disabled, out of town, observing a religious holiday, or fit another specific circumstance. Voting rights groups say this will favor white voters.

"It’s an example of how a ‘race neutral policy’ can end up having racially disparate impacts," Kevin Morris, a researcher for the Brennan Center, told CNN. "You don’t have to use the word ‘race’ to carve up the electorate in racially disparate ways."

Many of the voting methods Georgia Republicans are now trying to restrict are ones that they once championed. The state’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, boasts in his press releases about Georgia’s “trifecta” of early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and automatic voter registration. The new Republican-backed bills would eliminate or reduce all three.

The only thing that changed, Democrats say, is that Republicans lost three important elections.

“It’s pathetically obvious to anyone paying attention that when Trump lost the election and Georgia flipped control of the US Senate to Democrats shortly after, Republicans got the message that they were in a political death spiral,” said Renitta Shannon, a Democratic member of the Georgia House of Representatives. 

“And now they’re doing anything they can to silence the voices of Black and Brown voters specifically because they largely powered these wins.”