ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill Tuesday that makes additional changes to Georgia’s election laws ahead of the 2024 presidential election in the battleground state. It also includes the definition of probable cause for removing voters from the rolls if their eligibility is contested.
Republican activists have challenged more than 100,000 voters in the state in recent years, fueled by debunked theories of election fraud. Activists say they are eradicating duplicate records and weeding out voters who moved out of state.
The bill Kemp signed into law (SB 189) includes possible causes for removing a voter from the rolls: death, proof of voting or registration in another jurisdiction, or primary residence elsewhere. tax exemption indicating a tax exemption, or a non-resident address is listed. Most controversially, it says it can consider a national change of address list, although it is not exclusive.
Supporters say probable cause would make the challenge process more difficult. Opponents objected, saying the changes would further enable baseless attacks on voters, overwhelm election officials and disenfranchise legitimate voters. For example, people sometimes live in business locations that are considered non-residential addresses. Officials with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office said there are more reliable types of information, such as driver’s license data, to verify voter eligibility.
Georgia’s bill also allows for challenges and allows voters to be removed from the rolls up to 45 days before an election. Federal law says states and counties cannot systematically change voting rolls within 90 days after a federal election, a provision that has contributed to the threat of lawsuits from liberals. .
The bill would also require homeless people to use their county voter registration office as their address, rather than their place of residence. Opponents say it could make it difficult for homeless citizens to vote because their registered polling place could be far away.
Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, calls the bill “a voter suppression bill that emboldens right-wing activists seeking to drive black and brown voters out of elections.” and condemned the signing of SB189. Rawls. “
“By signing SB189 into law, Brian Kemp delivered a gift to MAGA election deniers,” the group said in a statement.
Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, said the bill is a “setback for voter rights and voting access.”
“We are committed to protecting Georgia voters, and we intend to meet with the governor in court,” he said in a statement.
Garrison Douglas, press secretary in the governor’s office, did not immediately respond to an email.
The bill would also grant access to Georgia’s ballot to political parties that qualify for the presidential ballot in at least 20 states or territories. The changes could support independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but his campaign has scared off Democrats who fear they will lose support from President Joe Biden. are doing.
Other changes in the bill include removing Raffensperger from his ex-officio position on the State Board of Elections. Mr. Kemp and Republican lawmakers had previously removed Mr. Raffensperger from a voting seat on the board.
Many Republicans believe former President Donald Trump’s theory that he was defrauded of Georgia’s 16 electors in 2020 is false, and the Republican secretary of state forcefully defended the election results showing Biden’s victory. He sees Mr. Fensperger as a special enemy.
Raffensperger and several others had lobbied Kemp, himself a former secretary of state, to veto the bill.
Additionally, the bill would say that starting July 1, 2026, states would no longer be able to use a type of barcode called a QR code to tabulate ballots created by state ballot marking devices. This is how votes are currently counted, but opponents say voters don’t trust the QR codes because they can’t read them. Instead, the bill says ballots must be read using machine-generated text or human-readable marks, such as filled-in bubbles.
The bill also requires counties to report the results of all absentee ballots by one hour after polls close. It would also allow counties to use paper ballots in elections with fewer than 5,000 people registered, but the change won’t take effect until 2025.
Kemp on Tuesday vetoed another election bill that would ban political contributions by foreign nationals and impose additional registration requirements on agents of foreign principals. The governor noted that such donations are already prohibited by federal law and said some of the registration requirements were not what the bill’s sponsors intended.
