Because the Georgia State Election Board faces backlash and authorized challenges for a number of main rule adjustments simply weeks earlier than Election Day, some authorized commentators have cast doubt upon whether or not these adjustments might truly imperil vote counting and certification of the election. Even when they don’t succeed, these last-minute and fully pointless rule adjustments are complicated and doubtlessly intimidating, particularly for voters of coloration who’ve skilled an extended and sordid historical past of discrimination in Georgia. They waste useful sources and sow doubt in regards to the election. Whether or not or not they’re profitable, they dilute essentially the most primary rules of American democracy.
To be clear, prime officials in Georgia, together with the Secretary of State, have signaled a willingness to take motion to make sure that vote counting and certification proceeds easily. Litigation can also be quashing their impression. Voters in Georgia and throughout the nation ought to really feel assured that their votes shall be counted pretty. All of us deserve a free and truthful election, and each citizen deserves to have their elementary proper to vote protected. And even when county-level certification proceeds on time for each state to satisfy the bipartisan Electoral Depend Reform Act’s December 11th deadline for governors to submit their certification to Congress, these rule adjustments are nonetheless a risk to American democracy.
Simply as turnout shouldn’t be the measure of whether or not voter suppression exists, so too ought to the election finally being licensed on time with the rightful winner not be the metric of whether or not these guidelines are dangerous. Voter suppression legal guidelines will not be all the time adopted by decreases in turnout—and will even “backfire”—as a result of Black and brown voters could arrange onerous sufficient to beat the discriminatory boundaries imposed by voter ID legal guidelines, polling place closures and extra. However these voters had been still harmed by inequitable voting legal guidelines due to the necessity to work more durable to beat the discriminatory legal guidelines. Under voting rights law, having a destructive impact on turnout or votes being counted equally just isn’t the measure of democracy. Delayed vote counts, county officers delaying or refusing to certify and different disruptions within the course of are prone to undermine voter confidence by elevating questions of whether or not their votes had been pretty counted and sowing mistrust and misinformation, together with reinforcing a perception that some votes and voters can’t be trusted.
County officers have a compulsory, non-discretionary, fully ministerial responsibility to certify the outcomes of the election, and the principles handed by the partisan SEB majority fly within the face of this well-established body of law. Georgia has sturdy authorized instruments in place to permit state officers to compel certification if wanted, so it’s unlikely that native election board members refusing to certify will truly end in certification being denied. Nonetheless, offering cowl for election board members to baselessly deny certification is alarming, legitimizing efforts to disenfranchise voters primarily based on unfounded accusations of fraud.
At the least one of many guidelines adopted by the board in August was initially submitted by a former county election official on the behest of a regional chief of the Election Integrity Community, a gaggle whose questionable efforts led to unduly difficult certification of the 2020 election leads to Georgia and different states. The identical individuals who referred to as the 2020 outcomes into query are including much more instruments to their toolboxes—together with potential delays in vote counting that they might once more use to attempt to undermine democracy by perpetuating disinformation in regards to the election outcomes.
Trying to govern the outcomes of elections and take the best to vote away is anti-democratic—whether or not or not it really works. It’s unlikely to work in Georgia, in that the state’s electoral votes are prone to be awarded to the highest vote getter. However the State Election Board’s guidelines hurt American democracy in different methods: they be a part of a bigger effort to make it simpler to query authentic election outcomes, delay vote counting and allow manipulation. They’re nothing lower than an assault on democracy and the integrity of our elections. Till Congress takes motion by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, these new threats to American democracy will solely grow to be extra frequent.
Picture of polling sign by U.S. Division of State (IIP Bureau) below Creative Commons License
