The Daily Signal - This Lawmaker Lost His Job Over Georgia's New Election Law. Here's His Story.

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

Georgia state Rep. Barry Fleming lost his job over the state's recently passed election reform legislation. The Hancock County Board of Commissioners voted 4-0 to ask Fleming to resign as county attorney "after pressure from citizens opposed to his work on proposed voting law changes," Georgia Public Broadcasting reported March 10. Critics of Georgia's new law say it hampers voting rights, but Fleming, R-Harlem, argues that it does just the opposite. “It makes it easier to vote in Georgia,” Fleming says, adding: In Georgia, we actually expanded the days to early vote. There's now or can be an extra 36 hours at least of early voting in Georgia. We made it very simple when it comes to absentee ballots. You still need no excuse to vote absentee in Georgia, and all you have to do is write down your driver's license number. ... So in Georgia we think going forward it will be easier to vote, but hopefully harder to cheat. 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 Friday, April 30th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Richard Del Judas. Georgia State Representative Barry Fleming lost his job over the election reform bill Georgia just passed. He joins me on the Daily Signal podcast to share his story. And 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, on to our top news. Vice President Kamala Harris says she agrees with Republicans.

Senator Tim Scott that America isn't a racist country but says the country has to speak the truth on racism. Here is her exchange with George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America. Senator Tim Scott said last night that America is not a racist country. Do you agree with that? And what do you make of his warning against fighting discrimination with more discrimination? I believe that we need to address. Well, first of all, no, I don't think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak truth about the history of in our country and its existence today.

And I applaud the President for always having the ability and the courage, frankly, to speak the truth about it. He spoke what we know from the intelligence community. One of the greatest threats to our national security is domestic terrorism manifested by white supremacist. And so these are issues that we must confront. And it does not help to heal our country to unify us as a people to ignore the realities of that.

president has been outstanding and a real national leader on the issue of saying let's confront the realities and let's deal with it, knowing we all have so much more in common than what separates us. And the idea is that we want to unify the country, but not without speaking truth and requiring accountability as appropriate. In an interview on Thursday with MSNBC, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city will be fully reopened starting on July 1st. New York City and the majority of its businesses have been closed or under indoor capacity limits since March 2020. Here's Mayor de Blasio making the announcement via MSNBC. Our plan is to fully reopen New York City on July 1st. We are ready for stores to open,

for businesses to open, offices, theaters, full strength. Under the new directives, indoor capacity limits will be lifted, but other preventative measures, including mask mandates, will still be kept in place. After June, those measures may be reassessed. The Florida legislature has approved a bill that will keep transgender girls from competing on girls' sports teams. The legislation, the Fairness in Women's Sports Act, which was passed on Wednesday, says that schools must determine teams based on the biological sex and must be clearly denoted as either for males, females, or co-ed athletes. In West Virginia, Republican Governor Jim Justice signed legislation on Wednesday that keeps transgender students off of women's sports teams

and public, middle schools, high schools, and universities. Senator Ted Cruz announced he would no longer be accepting campaign donations from corporate political action committees that openly espouse woke messaging and disparaged the GOP. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Cruz called corporations, quote, Fair Weather Friends and wrote that they, quote, have taken advantage of Republicans for too long. In recent months, Republicans have become increasingly critical,

of companies entering the political sphere, such as Major League Baseball moving the All-Star game from Georgia in protest of the state's new election integrity bill. Cruz also encouraged other Republicans to reject woke money, writing, quote, when the time comes that you need help with a tax break or a regulatory change, I hope the Democrats take your calls, because we may not. Starting today, we won't take your money either. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Georgia State Representative Barry Fleming at the annual leadership conference.

I'm Zach Smith and I'm John Carl O'Conaparo and if you want to understand what's happening at the Supreme Court be sure to check out SCOTUS 101 a Heritage Foundation podcast we take a look at the cases the personalities and the gossip at the highest court in the land be sure to subscribe on Spotify Apple podcasts or wherever else you find your podcasts it's SCOTUS 101 we are joined on the Daily Signal by georgia State Representative Berry Fleming representative Fleming thank you for being with us on the daily signal Thank you for having me, Rachel, I appreciate it. Well, you were part of the leadership in the Georgia legislature that passed Georgia's new election integrity bill. Can you start off just by telling us about the bill? Sure, yeah. The Speaker of the House asked me to step down from being the chairman of our Judiciary Committee and chair a special committee on election integrity. So in Georgia, we learned through the pandemic that we had some problems with parts of our election law.

We have election bills every couple of years anyway to go along with changes. and technology and adjustments, but particularly after the pandemic, we realized we needed to make some specific changes. So we did several things in Georgia. We increased our security, I guess you would say, when it comes to voting with absentee ballots. We now are using the same identification requirements or similar for absentee ballots that we use for people showing their IDs when they go to vote in person. Although we're in person preference state, our absentee ballots increased like many states did during the pandemic from about 3% to upwards of 30 or 40%. And our system just wasn't designed to deal with that.

Some of the other things that we did for the first time we're requiring security paper in Georgia, whether it's an absentee ballot or voting in person so that no one can just go get a piece of paper and call it a ballot. But there were several things like that in our elections law that we fine-tuned to make it easy to vote in Georgia, but hard to cheat. Well, a lot of critics of this legislation say that it hampers voting rights. Is that the case? Not at all. In fact, it makes it easier to vote in Georgia. In Georgia, we actually expanded the days to early vote. There's now, or can be, an extra 36 hours at least of early voting in Georgia. We made it very simple when it comes to absentee ballots. You still need no excuse to vote absentee in Georgia, and all you have to do is write down your driver's license number.

It's kind of a unique identifier number in Georgia. 97% of our voters in Georgia are identified on the voting roads by the driver's license number. Nobody really uses a driver's license number for anything else. So it's real secure. It's almost like a unique pen. So in Georgia, we think, going forward, it will be easier to vote, but hopefully hard to achieve. Well, you actually lost your job as a result of this legislation. It's become very personal for you.

Can you tell us the story about what happened losing your job as the county attorney? Yeah. In Georgia, we're only part-time legislators. We have to have, quote, unquote, a real job to pay the mortgage. For me, I'm a practicing attorney in the Augusta area, and my law firm is only about 12 folks, lawyers, and staff. And one of our clients is local government clients. We serve as city or county attorney.

And the left went after me because I chaired the committee and helped pass this bill, and actually is actively still to this day trying to get my clients to fire me. And they did succeed in having one of them do that during the legislative session. So, you know, it's a small price to pay to make elections better accessible and more secure in Georgia. But we have had to endure not just the political attacks from the left, which we're kind of used to, but now the personal attacks on our livelihoods. So my fear is that if people don't come out and support, you know, these good bills like we passed in Georgia, it will allow the left to be successful and deter other state legislators from updating and performing their election laws to make it secure to vote all across the nation.

Well, on the personal note for you, losing your job, what's next for you? What are you looking to do? Well, fortunately, my firm does have other clients that we serve, so I still have other people that I'm working for. But our goal right now is that this attack upon my clients and trying to get them to fire me hasn't stopped. they literally were told or hiring people to go around to protest and try to convince them to do that. So I'll continue to try to educate my clients as to the fairness of this bill that we passed and how it's going to make it easier to vote in Georgia. Well, as you're aware, there's so much pushback when it comes to having people provide an ID to be able to vote. Yes.

But when you look at society and what we have to do to provide an ID for, we have to do that to get on a plane to adopt a pet. There's so many things you have to give your ID for. for. Why is there this pushback behind providing an ID? Is it racist? Like, what is your perspective? Of course not. It's racist. Not racist, rather. And, you know, but they do claim it is racist. You know, a few years ago, we had this battle in Georgia overshowing your ID to the polls. And I remember from that discussion, there was this entity that required you to show your ID that was called the Democratic National Convention. In order to get on the floor of the Democratic National Convention when they held it that year, and I'm told they still do, they

require a photo ID. When you get on a plane to fly anywhere, you require a photo ID. If you're going to go cash a check or prove yourself to your bank when you're withdrawing funds, quite often in person, they make you show a photo ID. So this whole concept of a photo ID being racist is simply ridiculous. If you look at several blue states across the nation, their voting laws are very similar, if not identical in some ways to ours, that ID being part of that and the idea that is somehow racist to show your photo ID, which we do in so many aspects of society, is just one of the ridiculous things the left is pushing and attacking us in Georgia over.

Well, institutions like Major League Baseball, they've withdrawn from Atlanta, they've moved elsewhere. What's your perspective on this becoming part of a societal debate and MLB moving out of Georgia? You know, it's interesting when the Major League Baseball removed the All-Star game from Atlanta, the people that got hurt the most were the folks in that area where the game would be played. A large minority population, there are particularly small businesses owned by minorities. They had geared up and were planning for this to be a big boost, particularly coming out of COVID.

And to move Major League Baseball, All-Star game, to try to punish Georgia for voting, passing a fair voting law, and then end up hurting minority businesses. You know, that's just the sad state of the race. of the left's campaign against common sense. It didn't make any sense at all and still does not. So we talked about the MLB moved the game out of Atlanta to Colorado. That's right. How different is Colorado's voting law than Georgia's?

How different is this? In many ways, Georgia makes it easier to vote than Colorado does in several ways. It's certainly not so different that it would justify moving a game. And once again, the irony of it all, it was minorities and minority business owners that would probably hurt the most by moving. the game out of Atlanta to Colorado. You talked about how minority business owners have been hurt by this. Sure.

On the larger scale, how do the people of Georgia feel about what's happening? You know, there's been some recent polling in Georgia, and there's significant support, majority support, Democrat and Republican for several aspects of the voting bill that we pass, particularly this whole idea we discuss with showing your ID. It's so common sense. So the rhetoric of the left, although they're trying to attack people like me personally and other supporters, legislators that supported the law, there is, I think, a growing voter and citizen backlash against the untruths being told by the left. So I think right now in Georgia, with the help of the

Heritage Foundation, for example, this word is getting out that what we did is a good thing. Well, I believe I heard that the Georgia governor, Brian Campi, offered to talk to the MLB about what was in the law. Whatever happened with that, did they have that conversation? As I know, they did not allow him to have that conversation. which is the height of being a bad organization as far as making your decisions, in my view. If you won't even talk about what's in the bill and then you make a punitive decision that hurts Georgians, they can't be anything good about that either. What do you want the larger population to know about what the Georgia election reform bill does

that maybe the media just isn't reporting on? Well, there have been so many fallacies that have put out there about our voting bill, even President Biden himself said, what a shame Georgia has now cut off voting at 5 o'clock right when people get off work. There's absolutely no truth in that at all. In fact, we only said that you had to be open at least 9 to 5 in early voting in Georgia. It used to be something called normal business hours, which varied across our 159 counties. So we actually expanded the number of hours to vote and said you can be open until 7 to 7 if that's good for your area.

So, you know, that's just one of the things that was put out there that was untrue. This whole idea that people can't be given water if they're standing in line to vote. Another thing that was completely untrue. Not only can you can be given water, all we did in Georgia is said we've always had this 150-foot area that once the voters get inside there, that's where you leave them alone, you don't campaign. We were having problems with that happening in Georgia. We just reiterated what the law already was. So there's just multiple examples of shrinking early voting hours to when we actually expanded it,

making it harder to vote absentee when it's easier now probably than it ever was before. So many examples of falsehoods that are out there. Well, speaking of the media, what is your perspective on how the media has covered this legislation? You know, the media on the left has been very unfair. They have just reiterated the talking points from the left. that has mischaracterized what we did in Georgia. Fortunately, there are some outlets that are in the middle and on the right that have been reporting this. They're just catching up with some of the big lies on the left, I would say.

So, you know, slowly the word is getting out there of actually the fair law that we passed in Georgia, but it's been an effort. What else needs to happen, in your opinion, to ensure election integrity throughout this country, so not just in Georgia, but throughout the country as a whole? I think we've got to talk about more actively actually how we made it easier. to vote in harder to cheat in Georgia because that's what other states are doing. I have begun something called the Election Integrity Fund, a 501C4, just to try to get out this information of what we did in Georgia so other states can follow the example and help people vote. And, you know,

the main thing is, is that we want it easy to vote, but we don't want your or any other legal citizens' votes canceled out by someone who wasn't supposed to vote. So the more that we can get that message out across the nation, I think the better off will be. On a large scale note, what kind of risk does the country run if election integrity isn't pursued, and that's not something that we actually have? Well, one of the main things about democracy is the people have to have confidence in their election system, because if they don't have confidence in their election system, that it works properly, that it's fair, that only people that are supposed to vote or allow to vote, well, then it

begins to undermine the whole bedrock of our democracy. So I think this idea of fair elections, elections that are run with integrity, is so important, and the left is only undermining that with some of their actions and some of the criticisms they leveled unfairly at Georgia. Well, it's really interesting that you bring up that point of confidence. I have a couple friends back in Ohio especially, and they've seen what's happened with the presidential elections and even beyond that, and they've told me that, and I'm not really sure I'm going to vote again on another election.

because they are very concerned about what's happening. Have you heard similar stories? Yeah, we have. We've seen that in Georgia. If you look in Georgia, the drop-off between the November election that we had in 2020 and then we had runoffs in Georgia for two Senate seats, there was a significant drop-off in voters that turned out, particularly in some of the more rural areas in Georgia, and it was because of a lack of confidence in some of the ways some of our counties were running the election system. So we've not only heard that, but we've seen that. that firsthand in Georgia, people thinking that, well, if my vote's not going to count, why should I even go vote? That's one reason we pass this bill in Georgia to restore confidence in our voting

system. Well, State Representative Fleming, thank you so much for joining us on The Daily Signal. It's been great having you with us. Thank you, Rachel. I enjoyed being here. 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 IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a 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 on Monday. 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.

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