Georgia enacts law adding ID requirement to absentee voting

Source: Politico | March 25, 2021 | Zach Montellaro

The new law also strips away some of the secretary of state’s power.

Republicans in the Georgia legislature have passed a sweeping elections law that would add an ID requirement to absentee ballots, shorten runoffs in the state after two high-profile Republican losses and strip the secretary of state off of the state election board.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed it shortly after it passed out of the legislature on Thursday. “Georgia will take another step toward ensuring our elections are secure, accessible and fair,” Kemp said Thursday, shortly after signing the bill into law.

Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers of the state legislature, railed against the bill and promised immediate lawsuits.

The battle over voter access has been under an intense spotlight in Georgia. After his loss in the state in 2020, former President Donald Trump spread conspiracy theories about the election. Republican supporters of the former president latched on to his claims and sought to change election laws in Georgia and elsewhere in the name of election security, but the bills often would result in making it harder to vote.

Republican lawmakers in Georgia proposed some additional measures that would have drastically reduced access to the polls, which included rolling back no-excuse absentee voting and restricting Sunday voting, which is popular among Black voters during “Souls to the Polls” events. Neither of those measures were ultimately included in the package set for Kemp’s desk.

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