Guest column: GOP pushed bogus reforms in the name of securing (already safe) elections – The Augusta Chronicle

Some people are trying to tell Richmond County voters that the anti-voting bills recently signed by our governor will help protect “election vulnerabilities that fueled controversy.”

This so-called “elections expert,” Hans von Spakovsky, of the Election Law Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, is famous for pushing false claims of voter fraud to the point where the late John Lewis described him as someone “trying to create a cure where there is no sickness.”

What this so-called election expert conveniently forgets to mention is that those so-called election “vulnerabilities” are based on right-wing conspiracy theories fueled by him and like-minded persons who use a phantom notion of widespread voter fraud as a weapon to promote and defend efforts to make it harder to vote.

The simple truth is that there was no systemic voter fraud in the 2020 elections. Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger agreed, Gov. Brian Kemp agreed, and if you don’t believe them, Georgia election workers spearheaded two recounts and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted an audit to confirm the results of the 2020 Georgia election. Our voters turned out, especially in counties like Richmond, and some right-wing conspiracy theories believe voter fraud is the only explanation for increased voter turnout in Black communities like ours.

Senate Bill 202, signed into law by Gov. Kemp, creates problems where none exist. The new ID provisions impact voters who do not have a photo ID (disproportionately Black and brown voters) or access to a copier or printer, while also putting voters at increased risk of identity theft. Republicans in the Georgia Legislature are willing to risk the identity theft of Georgians in order to impose restrictions that, by their own assessments, are unnecessary to protect our elections.

SB 202 also limits the county’s ability to make drop boxes available to voters. Our own election’s supervisor shared that the provisions in these bills will impact anybody who votes by mail who got used to the convenience of having drop boxes available for their use. By mandating that they only be placed inside early voting locations and only available during voting hours, the people who use them won’t be able to access them conveniently. Election supervisors from red and blue counties alike agree on this, but nevertheless these harmful proposals persist.

Counties also invest enough time and resources into ensuring ballot drop boxes maintain a secure chain of custody as the ballot goes from the voter to the local election office. Drop boxes feature security cameras to monitor ballot traffic and ensure that the boxes are not breached. Counties invested money this past election cycle to ensure voters had multiple safe options for casting their ballots. Our county spent $15,000, a testament to our commitment to voters. The drop box provisions in SB 202 will render drop boxes almost useless and make this investment towards voting access a wasted opportunity.

It is also incorrect of von Spakovsky to state that private election funding was targeted to “known Democratic districts.” The courts have already found that this argument is false given that many rural and Republican counties received grants. Any attempt to spin private investment for elections during the 2020 season as partisan is disingenuous and speaks to the tendency of far-right politicians to grasp at anything to discredit what we all know was a secure election process.

Republicans pushed bogus election reforms in the name of securing (already safe) elections, and now they’re trying to seize power from the local election officials we chose and put it in their own hands at the statehouse in Atlanta. SB 202 would empower a partisan state legislature to suspend, fire and replace any Richmond County election officials and our entire Board of Elections.

GOP politicians in Atlanta have made it clear that they won’t protect our freedom to vote and if they don’t like the outcomes we choose, they will change the rules of the game to come after our rights — and take away our local control of our elections.

Jordan Johnson represents District 1 on the Augusta Commission and is vice chair of the Public Service Committee.

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