The Daily Signal - Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp Explains His State’s New Election Law: What’s In It, What Isn’t

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

The state of Georgia enacted election reform legislation, signed into law last week, that has drawn harsh criticism from the left. President Joe Biden and others have likened it to the Jim Crow era. What does the election law accomplish, and how is Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp responding to the criticism? "The bill makes it easy to vote and hard to cheat," he said. "It replaces an arbitrary signature match on absentee ballots by mail with the voter ID, which is free in Georgia." Kemp joins "The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what's in the new law, and contrary to what its critics claim, what's not. We also cover these stories: Kemp says calls to boycott businesses in Georgia over the newly passed election law, which strengthens voting regulations, are “ridiculous.”  The United States has signed on with 13 other countries indicating concerns about a report from the World Health Organization regarding where the coronavirus came from.  The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it plans to take action to combat anti-Asian violence in America.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, March 31st. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. On today's Daily Signal podcast, our colleague Fred Lucas, interviews Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on the state's new voting law. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. The United States has signed on with 13 other countries logging concerns about a report from the World Health Organization on where the coronavirus came from. A joint statement from the countries per the Hill says,

We voice our shared concerns that the international expert study on the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was significantly delayed and lacked access to complete original data and samples. The concerns stemmed from speculation questioning how independent the World Health Organization was that looked into the origins of the coronavirus along with the Chinese scientists, and if the Chinese Communist Party was giving complete access on the origins of the virus. The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it plans to take action to combat anti-Asian violence in America. A White House fact sheet announcing the initiative explained that the Department of Health and Human Services is putting nearly $50 million towards a program to provide help to survivors,

of domestic violence and sexual assault, specifically in the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community. The Department of Justice and FBI will also be closely monitoring hate crimes toward Asian Americans in addition to a number of other actions. The effort comes after several violent attacks on Asians in America. Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, a Thai American, praised Biden's initiative in a statement on Tuesday saying, I applaud President Biden for recognizing our community's pain and taking concrete actions to protect AAPI individuals from violence and brute out anti-Asian bias

while also supporting the victims of hate crimes. Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp says the calls to boycott businesses in this state over the newly passed election law, which strengthens voting regulations, is ridiculous. Here's what Kemp had to say in an interview on Fox News. So do you think that the businesses in Georgia are going to, you know, collapse or succumb to the pressure from the left in terms of this boycott and how will that affect Georgia? I don't believe that they will. I mean, I agree with Bernie's King. It's wrong for people, especially a lot of these activists from out of state that are benefiting financially from pushing this narrative to punish hard work in Georgians. great institutions like the Masters and Major League Baseball and other things in our state that, by the way, employ a lot of hard work in Georgians that are trying to fight through this pandemic.

Church membership in America has fallen below 50% for the first time in recent history, according to a new Gallup poll. Gallup began tracking church membership in the 1930s, and though it has declined in recent years, it never fell below 50% until now. From 1940 to 2000, church membership averaged about 70% in America. By 2010, this number had fallen to 62%. In 2020, only 47% of Americans said they belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque. The decline in church membership can be linked to an increase in Americans who say they have no religious affiliation.

From 1998 to 2000, only 8% of Americans said they had no religious affiliation. Today, that number has increased to 21% of Americans who say they do not have a religious preference. Now stay tuned for Fred Lucas's conversation with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on the state's new voting law. We're all guilty of it, spending too much time watching silly videos on the internet. But it's 2021. Maybe it's time for a change. At the Heritage Foundation YouTube channel, you'll find videos that both entertain and educate,

including virtual events featuring the biggest names in American politics, original explainers and documentaries, and heritage experts diving deep on topics like election integrity, China, and other threats to our democracy. All brought to you by the nation's most broadly supported public policy Research Institute. Start watching now at heritage.org slash YouTube and don't forget to subscribe and share. We are joined today by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to talk about the new Georgia voting laws. Come under a lot of intense scrutiny at the national level. And governor wanted to

ask you specifically about what President Biden said last week. He made this, he and others. I've made this comparison to the Jim Crow era. And first, get your response to that. I mean, do you anticipate that the bill would come under that kind of rhetorical criticism? Well, Fred, thanks for having me on. I just appreciate all the work that Heritage is doing on this right now and their support to really push what the truth is out there, that obviously the president doesn't know what that is.

I don't think he has any idea what's in this bill. and really the people driving this narrative that are benefiting financially off of it, don't really care what's in the bill. They have their narrative written over a month ago before we work the final details out. But it's really pretty simple. The bill makes it easy to vote and hard to cheat. It replaces an arbitrary signature match on absentee ballots by mail with the voter ID, which is free in Georgia.

It secures ballot drop boxes. it makes sure that the county elections officials continuously tabulate all the votes until they're all counted, don't take any breaks overnight and things of that nature. And then believe it or not, I think unbeknownst to the president, it expands early voting opportunities here in Georgia, especially on the weekends. So it's pretty comical that the outrage that we're seeing from the left, but it's really just driving a narrative and it's gotten so bad that even the Washington Post is given President Biden the four Pinocchio's on their fact-checked on this.

Do you think the particular demonizing of this legislation at the state level is to boost the Democrats' chances of passing H.R. 1 at the federal level? Oh, I don't think there's any doubt about this. I think this is part of the playbook that if you look and see when the domain name Jim Crow 2.0 was reserved. It was long before they ever knew what was going to be in the final version of the bill. It was all part of the narrative to say, hey, Georgia did this. And if it had been another state, they'd be targeting them and making the same case for passing HR1, which, as you know, Fred, is an unconstitutional power grab by the Democrats.

And now Joe Biden's labeling the filibuster Jim Crow as well. But I tell you, I think the other thing he's doing is trying to distract from the problem he has on the border. You know, his reversal of President Trump's policies down there. People are flooding across the border kids and women being trafficked. And I think they're just trying to distract from that and drive their takeover bid in Washington, D.C. That's unconstitutional. Yeah, you mentioned if this has been any other state. Washington Post article you mentioned brought up that Delaware probably has more strict early voting laws than Georgia at this point.

Yeah, I was just actually looking at a comparison of the two states that somebody did, one of our legislators that sent out. It's really interesting, especially when you look at the opportunities to vote early in our state versus Delaware. I mean, it's a world of difference. The president should be worried about his own state, not the great state of Georgia. There's been a lot said about the drop boxes and what's different about drop boxes under this law than in the 2020 election. but the fact is this law codifies drop boxes. I mean, drop boxes would not be in future elections but for this law.

Is that correct? Absolutely. Which is really what's so ridiculous about their argument about the drop boxes being taken away or the use of drop boxes is being suppressed. They never have been in the law, at least in recent years. They were a tool to use with the pandemic when we had problems with the post office. across the country. People worried about so many votes by mail to alleviate that situation. The Secretary of State and the State Election Board used the emergency powers that they had

under the public health state of emergency that existed in Georgia to allow drop boxes. Now, they were supposed to be secured with cameras and other things, which didn't happen. That upset a lot of people. You had other counties that didn't use drop boxes at all. And basically, the legislature said, hey, we've got to have an orderly process for drop boxes. We think it's a good option, but they need to be in a secure environment where people can simply drop their ballot off if they don't trust the mail, which I don't have a problem with. And that's what we've done in this bill. And now all 159 counties will be,

will have to be required to have at least one drop box that will be available during working hours inside a voting location. So it can be properly monitor where people can go drop their ballot off. But to, you know, make the case that this was taken away is ridiculous. If we hadn't included it in the bill, once the public health emergency goes away, the drop boxes would have gone away as well, because as you said, it was never in the law to start with. There has been a good deal of news coverage out there looking into money that came in that was funded by Mark Zuckerberg grants, just outside institutes in general that were putting money into local counties.

Could you talk about a little bit about how this bill addresses that outside money coming into for election administration? Yeah, and that was something I think frustrated a lot of people because it was obviously targeted, I think for a reason or a lot of people felt it was. This will really just, you know, do away with that and treat all counties fairly. You know, the thing about elections is you want them to be secure, accessible, and fair. And they should be, in my opinion, consistent all across our state. from the opportunity for people to be able to vote,

but also being able to secure the ballot. And for certain counties to have, you know, private resources that other counties don't have is really not equitable in that process. And that was something the General Assembly weighed on in the legislation. And that was what was in the final version that I signed. After going through many iterations of attacking this bills,

it seems like the left has sort of settled on water bottle. as the main rallying try in this? Why do you think that is? Do you think it's a lack of substance on the voter ID issues that they have to rely on this? Yeah, I guess that's all that got left, Fred, is water. You know, even the president mentioned that, which, you know, the only thing,

the only water he should be concerned with is the water that's leaking from that dam that's broken on the southern border right now. But people can still get water. obviously a voter can bring a bottle of water, bring a drink, they can bring food with them to the location. The counties can provide a water station that voters need it, but we're not going to allow electioneering and allow, you know, campaign staff, third party groups, candidate themselves to hand out water or snacks or goodies, while people are within that 150-foot buffer of the precinct or 25 feet within within the end of the line. you can still set up outside that buffer and sign wave and cook hamburgers and hand out pamphlets and, you know, the Democratic Party can set up, the Republican Party can set up. But when you're inside that buffer, voters don't need to be intimidated.

They need to be left alone where it's an orderly process and they're not being pulled one way or another. They can vote their conscience and do it in a secure way and move on. but that whole argument about taking water away is comical, quite honestly. But I've also told people, Fred, like, why are people standing in line that long? You know, they should be outraged that in these counties, mainly run by Democrats, where you have long lines, why is the process not more efficient? Why don't they have more people working there? Why isn't there more equipment there?

Well, this bill actually addresses that to speed up the voting process for people. Of course, the left is not mentioning that. They're only mentioning that, you know, their third party groups and others now can't go hand out goodies to try to sway people when they're standing in line. And this is something that's been in place for a long time and exist in almost every other state. To address this point that could be hanging out there. Of course, immediately after the presidential election, former President Trump had criticized you. Just to be clear on this point, support for this bill, does that? relate or in any way question the legitimacy of the Georgia outcome in 2020?

Well, to me, Fred, this is just about addressing problems that we had in this year's election. And this has been done many times in the past with other elections when things come up. The General Assembly would address it. There's actually provisions in this bill that the Democrats and these people that are talking about, you know, boycott in Georgia businesses, which is ridiculous. saying all these things, how bad this bill is. There's democratic provisions that were added to this bill to help the mechanics of the process that we saw

that didn't work very well on election day. You know, I've said, and I said this when I was Secretary of State and I'll say it today, there's fraud in every election. You know, how much of it that is determined after the election when the full investigations are being done. That's ongoing in the state of Georgia. And you know, you would have talked to the Secretary of State, and his investigators about that, even though I've allowed the Georgia Bureau investigation to help them with that this year,

just to make sure that we can get confidence back into our elections and that these things are being thoroughly vetted. But a lot of the problems, you know, how long it took the count to take place because of the arbitrary signature match, the voter ID, which is free in Georgia, will help address that, streamline the process, the continuous counting where people aren't taking breaks and monitors are having to leave and then they start counting before they come back or whatever the allegation was, that'll resolve that issue,

making sure that people can watch that process that are monitoring the elections that weren't allowed to do that or it was done so in a way that they were so far away that they couldn't properly see what was going on. I mean, the ability to watch the logic and accuracy testing before the election. A lot of those nuts and bolts things are addressed in this bill to really

help with things that we did see that were definitely problems on election day. I think will help us run more efficient elections in the future. They're still going to be in many ways, even not only accessible, but even more accessible with more opportunities for weekend voting in Georgia. But because of these things, it's also going to be very secure, which is what people should want. And the majority of Jordan support the voter ID requirement and a lot of the other things that we have going on here in our state. And just real quick, I'll circle them back to the line about the water and so forth. That is something that's not entirely new, right? I mean, I did see that Secretary Raffensberger had actually tried to address that during the 2020

election process in the early voting, looking into how to avoid people handing. out goodies and so forth in the voting lines. Yeah, and I mean, that was in place every year that I was Secretary State. I mean, we would always have problems, you know, in Georgia, the county sheriff as a constitutional officer, they're in charge of making sure that courthouses are secure and securing voting locations, and we always had issues with, you know, if the sheriff's going to a precinct the same year, they're up for election to do their official duties, you know, there's that gray line there, but we've always had, you know, that issue. And I've had this myself. When I was Secretary of State, I used to visit precincts all the time during the election to just go in and see

how it was going, see how the lines were moving, see if the equipment was working correctly. But like the years I was on the ballot, I did not do that because I would have been in that boundary, even if I wasn't campaigning. I just felt like that was improper. And part of our process and has been for over a decade is you have to put those signs up marking that line so people know, you know, if they want to put signs up outside a precinct, they got to be outside that boundary. If they want to sign waive to people that are driving in or walking into the precinct, they have to be outside that boundary. So this is nothing new.

It is just addressing, I think, a specific problem or problems that people got complaints about in this last cycle. with the new ID requirement, replacing signature verification, that seems on some level it could be easier to verify, also with more resources addressing along lines. Have the local election

officials been supportive of this? I mean, you'd probably be better asking legislators about that because they're the ones that were lobbied on the bill. I will tell you this, I've talked to several folks that I've worked with over the years that are either election superintendents

or elected probate judge, that run elections in our counties. In some counties, the probate judge does it. In some counties, we have an election superintendent and a local elections board that does that. And several of them, I asked them about the ID requirement or either a photocopy, putting the numbers down, last four of your social things,

your free voter ID card that will give you a state-issued ID card here in Georgia. Very easy to get that ID. you know, 97% of the people are already voting without here in our state prior to this election because most people voted in person, only a few voted absentee. They feel like this will speed up the process. It will make it more efficient and it takes out the arbitrary nature of a signature match and trying to say, well, yeah, this is close or it's not close enough.

I mean, if the numbers match, the numbers match on your driver's license. If they don't, they don't. And I think it's going to be a big help, and it's in no way going to alienate or disallow someone from the opportunity to vote because most people have these IDs. If they don't, we'll get them one for free. And even if you don't have that, there's provisions in the bill where you can still get an absentee ballot by submitting other documents that are listed out in the legislation. And on one point, you do have to return those absentee ballots earlier. Could these critics, I mean, is it reasonable for them to say that that does, that is a restriction, at least that you have to return them earlier than previously? Well, I guess you could make that case, but you also have the United States Post Office saying that, you know, you should do that 14 days before an election.

I think this bill has 11 days, so we're not as stringent as what the United States. of state's post office is saying. So if they're saying that while Joe Biden is president, then, you know, I think that pours cold water on that argument. But I'm pretty sure this provision, too, is one of the ones that the Democrats supported. And I think it's also one that the association of county elections officials of Georgia, which is all the county commissioners across our state supported as well. Because the reason this is being done is to make sure that people get their ballot back in time so it doesn't miss the deadline to be counted and come in after the election's over and that vote get thrown out. So it'll help with that, but also putting,

you know, codifying the drop boxes allows people, even if they're worried about the mail, they can drop it in a drop box. And even, you know, like the last few days of the election or on election day, that voter can still deliver that ballot to an election clerk. to make sure that boat is counted. So I don't think that argument really holds a whole lot of water. All right. Is there anything else you would like to add? Well, I just appreciate all the work that you guys are doing

and really helping us get the truth out there. I think that, you know, I've been telling a lot of people, look, don't just believe me. Go fact-check it for yourself. Look at a lot of the things, even the Washington Post now that's fact-checking this. This is a good bill. It fixes a lot of issues that we had. it continues to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat in Georgia.

And I just appreciate you having me on. Okay. Well, thanks for joining. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeartRadio. Please be sure to leave us their review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage

others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you. all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.