With all eyes on Trump’s New York porny peener payment trial, Georgia’s Republican Party been working hard at some ELECTION INTERFERENCE ratfuckery all on its own. They can’t win elections because they know full well most of the voters hate them and their shitty policies, especially the six-week-abortion ban, opposed by 62 percent of voters.
So Georgia Governor and drawling dishtowel Brian Kemp signed into law three new bills of vote-suppression insanity (SB 189, HB 974, HB 1207) to ensure November’s elections will turn into a yuge cluster the likes of which you’ve never seen before, with a gazillion disputed ballots, massive lines for fewer voting machines, and overworked and overwhelmed poll workers. Do you want to be the next Ruby Freeman or Shaye Moss? Come on down!
By the way, breaking, the Georgia state Court of Appeals decided to consider Trump and his nine dirtbag election-rigging co-defendants’ appeal of Judge Scott McAfee’s decision not to disqualify prosecutor Fani Willis, which almost completely guarantees no RICO trial on the docket before the election. Yep, unless the Supreme Court surprises everyone in June with a PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY ruling that isn’t some kind of a giant gift-wrapped immunity monkeywrench for Lord Emperor Don VonShitzinpants, the New York hush money case is the only time he’ll spend farting up a courtroom before November.
So courts won’t save us from That Man, and Kemp is doing is part so the ballot box can’t either. “Sorry I couldn’t find you 11,780 votes, so how about a million?”
Kemp already signed a fuckerooney of a bill in 2021 (SB 202), the one that went like: No offering water or snacks to people in line, the State Elections Board can replace a county’s election board and certify their votes for them, any voter can challenge the eligibility of as many other voters in their county as they want to, less time for voters to request absentee ballots, shorter window for mail-in ballots, mobile voting centers banned, the secretary of state removed from the voting board (eff you, Raffensperger), drop boxes limited, ID numbers required on mail-in ballots, less time and locations for early voting, limits the counting of provisional ballots … ugh.
The Texas-based “True The Vote” used that law and “citizen watchdogs” to try to disqualify more than 360,000 voters’ eligibility in the state, based on conspiracy theory “200 Mules” fairy tales about ballot-harvesting.
Now the new rules finish what that bill started, making it even easier for anybody to file sketchy mass voter challenges to remove voters from the rolls, based on any “relevant circumstances.” A challenge doesn’t have to be a voter in the same county any more, it can be from a conspiracy-theory “nonprofit” from Texas that finds out somebody’s moved from an online database and suspects they might be voting in two places. It lets voter registrations be challenged up to 45 days before an election, violating the National Voter Registration Act banning removal within 90 days of an election. It bans non-residential addresses. Live in an apartment at your golf motel and omelet bar? Off the rolls! Go to college and don’t cancel your registration in your home state? Off the rolls! A conspiracy theorist noticed you moved to Alpharetta recently and thinks you are a lizard in a person suit? Challenged! Off the rolls! Off with all of you, until the board of election reviews the challenge! Perhaps you want to vote with a provisional ballot until then? Maybe they’ll count your vote by their deadline, or maybe they won’t!
And in a gimme to the tapeworm that lives in RFK Jr.’s brain, Georgia law now allows a presidential candidate from any political party to be on the ballot, as long as they’ve qualified in at least 20 other states. It was supposed to help Trump, but looks like it’ll help his potential spoiler instead, oops!
New law also makes it harder for unhoused people to vote by banning use of post office boxes and automatically making their mailing address for elections set as the registrar’s office of their county of residence, because the unhoused do not have enough to worry about, and fuck you, that’s why.
It’s the Georgia Legislature’s vote-squashing, ballot-tossing gift to election-denying conspiracy theorists, and November is going to be one ugly mess. The ACLU and Stacey Abrams’s “Fair Fight Action” group are fighting it, but, outlook not good for this election.
Sorry, it sucks, but, YSK.
Be a shame if somehow the master voter roll leaked and somebody challenged every Republican.
The law is a double-edged sword, you simple bastards.
So much respect for Stacey Abrams staying in Georgia and fighting to make it better. Every state matters.