The Daily - A National Campaign to Restrict Voting

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

Georgia, a once reliably red state, has been turning more and more purple in recent years. In response, the Republican state legislature has passed a package of laws aimed at restricting voting.Today, we look at those measures and how Democrats are bracing for similar laws to be passed elsewhere in the country. Guest: Nick Corasaniti, a domestic correspondent covering national politics for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Georgia Republicans have moved early in a campaign to rewrite voting rules. Republicans in other states are determined to follow them.The country’s most hotly contested state has calmed down after months of drama, court fights and national attention. But new storms are on the horizon.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. In the weeks after the 2020 election, Georgia's Republican leaders were seen as defenders of election integrity, repeatedly rebuffing demands by President Trump to overturn Joe Biden's victory. Now, after adopting a sweeping election law, they've emerged as a threat to voting rights. My colleague, Nick Coriciniti, on what happened in between. It's Tuesday, March 30th. So, Nick, what is the story of how Georgia came to pass this sweeping new election law?

Well, I think you have to look at these hearings that were held in the Georgia legislature back in mid to late December. As the president was going around looking for people to support his claims and falsehoods about the election and was constantly getting rebuffed by statewide election officials like the secretary of state, he found a lot of allies in the state legislature. The state of Georgia is one of the Republican trifecta states where both houses of the state legislature as well as the governorship is held by Republicans. And so what they did is they held these hearings where they invited people like Rudy Giuliani to testify to kind of prove his points that there was lots of fraud, lots of issues with the election. And in those hearings, Giuliani in particular said some pretty inflammatory things

casting about a bunch of conspiracy theories, falsehoods about the elections, falsehood about the company that provided the elections machines to Georgia. And it was in those meetings that I think you started to see a legislature, see an opportunity to seize on this moment and this doubt that had been cast among the Republican base about the results of the election to possibly do something with the state's election laws. And why exactly is that, given just how little fraud was ever documented in Georgia in the 2020 election? Why would these Republican lawmakers seize on this mostly false message from President Trump and people like Rudy Giuliani and start to run with it and try to come up with a plan to remedy it? Well, publicly, what the lawmakers

were saying was that there was now a crisis of confidence within the electorate. There were a lot of people, particularly their supporters, who had bought into a lot of the lies and the falsehoods that were told about the 2020 election, some in which they, you know, might have helped spread by holding some of these hearings. Right. And that therefore something needed to be done. But I think you also need to look at the political reality that is on the ground in Georgia right now. It had been a reliably Republican state at the statewide level for years. And then in 2018, Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate for governor, only lost by about 50,000 votes. And it was a really close election. Fast forward to 2020, Biden carries the state as a presidential candidate for Democrats for the first time in

decades. And then you have the two United States senators, both Republican incumbents, who are now facing runoff elections by two Democratic challengers. And both of those elections at this point in December are way too close to call. They're basically dead even. So you have a Republican legislature that is looking at this state that had once been reliably red, just turning more and more purple. And so they view this political reality and they see maybe an opportunity to change some of these voting laws.

So Nick, it sounds like President Trump and those around him are giving voice in this moment and perhaps cover to pre-existing electoral anxieties among Georgia Republican lawmakers who are starting to fear that they're losing total control of power in Georgia. Exactly. The Republican legislators in Georgia know very well just how changing voting laws and restricting access to voting can impact their ability to hold on to power. It's a state that has a history of restrictive voting laws that date back to the

Reconstruction era. And even most recently, after the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013, had enacted numerous different laws that severely restricted voting. You had purges of voter rolls for inactive voters. There was at one point 500,000 that were just knocked off in one single day in July of 2017. And there have been over 200 voting precincts that have been shuttered since 2012, majority of those impacting communities of color. So there is a history of changes to voting laws, creating new barriers to the ballot box in Georgia that have often been used by Republican legislators to kind of help hold on to power amid shifting electorates. Right. And then in January, not that many weeks after those hearings you just described, those two Republican senators in Georgia go on to lose their seats to two Democratic challengers. And I have to imagine that deepens the sense of crisis

among Republican state lawmakers in Georgia. Exactly. In the arc of history, Georgia almost turns blue overnight. Biden wins the state in November. John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win their Senate runoff elections in January. And the Republican state legislature realizes that if they're going to make changes,

they're going to have to move quickly. So what do they do? So what happens is over the kind of month of January, they're meeting with different groups, they're talking to their constituents. And then all of a sudden, about 80 bills and resolutions are just unfurled. 80 bills. 80 different bills and resolutions, all varying degrees of trying to restrict access to voting, some very strident, some dealing with very minute things, but they all just kind of unfurl in the legislature in late January and early February.

Tell me about the most strident of these proposals. Well, one of these proposals specifically looked to restrict early voting on the weekends, in particular on Sunday. And voting on Sunday is an incredibly popular and important part of voting within the black church known as Souls to the Polls. And, you know, the black church is such an important part of the black community, particularly in Georgia. And for years, they have just been increasing their role in civic engagement and getting more and more of the Black community able to vote, helping them to vote, bringing them to vote. And so this provision was seen at almost specifically targeting those churches to prevent them from helping large parts of the Black community from voting on Sunday. from helping large parts of the Black community from voting on Sunday.

So this is clearly aimed at weakening the power of Georgia's Black electorate, which is heavily Democratic. No question. And so what is the reaction to that proposal? It's immediately met with outrage, both within Georgia and nationally. And eventually, the Republicans backed off that measure. So Nick, what proposals do end up in this final package of legislation? Well, let me give you a few examples, but broadly they deal with absentee voting,

with drop boxes, with voting in person, and with election oversight. So when it comes to absentee voting, one big change is that an ID is now required. Basically, anyone who wants to request an absentee ballot will need to show a driver's license or a state ID number instead of just doing a signature, which was then matched on a file and created a host of issues. So Republicans argued that bringing in these IDs made it both secure and a little easier. At the same time, civil rights groups will point that anytime you add an ID requirement to voting, it normally disproportionately impacts communities of color and poorer communities. So therefore, introducing identification requirements make it harder for them to vote.

Okay, got it. What else? They're also going to ban state and local election officials, as well as third-party groups, from sending out absentee ballot applications. This was done a lot in the 2020 election to kind of encourage people who weren't familiar with absentee voting to know that they had the ability to. They're going to limit drop boxes, which is where a voter can come and drop off their filled out absentee ballot. Right. During the 2020 election, those were open 24-7. They were just kind of outside and you could bring it there. The new law will limit the amount of drop boxes to just one per 100,000 active voters in a county.

And then also it will force them to be brought inside offices, meaning that they're no longer a 24-7 option. Instead, they're going to have much more restrictive hours as to when the building is open. Huh. Yeah. And then there's a whole host of new proposals that deal with oversight of elections and who gets to run elections and what kind of power the secretary of state has over the state that just kind of will alter and basically give more power to the state legislature over the administration and governance of elections. But there's this one other proposal that has gotten a lot of attention. And that's basically Georgia is known for having very long lines when it comes to in-person voting. Sometimes they stretch for hours. Now, lines tend to stretch longer in poorer communities and urban areas. And so there's

been third party groups that will sometimes come and bring food and water to those people who are waiting in line for hours on end in the blistering Georgia heat. Now, this law would ban those groups from bringing food and water and other assistance to voters waiting in hours long lines. seems very hard to understand as anything other than an attempt to make it harder for certain people to vote. Exactly. And so how do the people who proposed that defend it? There hasn't been that much of a defense except that they've tried to say technically it's just there's a radius of 150 feet that, you know, this ban affects. And so it gets into this kind of technicality. And that's where the defense has been. But the reality is it's going to prevent help, assistance and resources from reaching voters who are waiting in line to vote. So once this final package is complete and it's introduced, how intensely is this debated in a Republican-controlled legislature?

My sense is that it's kind of fate accompli. Exactly. So once they arrived on a final package of proposals, it moved very quickly. The hour of convening having arrived, all members of the House will please report to their assigned seats. The clerk will ring the bell. On Thursday, both chambers of the state legislature set about for a final passage. And though it was going to pass probably a long party line votes, they had to leave it open for debate. I rise today in opposition to the voter suppression bill otherwise known as SB 202. And what happened on Thursday was a lot of Democratic lawmakers stood up and gave pretty impassioned speeches

against the bill. We will not stand idly by and let Jim Crow 2.0 roll back the clock on our new Georgia. Mr. Speaker, thank you. I yield the will. They invoked the state's long history of repressive and racially targeted voting laws and connected these current restrictions to that long history. But it's time to take a chill pill, folks. Republicans stood up and intended more to push back on those attacks than necessarily offer any other defense. It's time to read the bill. Don't just listen to what you're being told. Actually, read the bill. Show me where there's suppression. There is no suppression in this bill. Other than pointing to that the bill was designed to improve election security and, quote unquote, restore confidence within the electorate. The ayes are 100. The nays are 75.

This bill, having received... After they passed the bill along party-line votes in both chambers, they sent the bill quickly over to Governor Kemp, who was poised to sign it. He held a signing ceremony behind closed doors late on Thursday night. But in a final moment of protest, doors late on Thursday night. But in a final moment of protest, one of the Democratic lawmakers, Park Cannon, who is a young black woman, came to attend the signing just to view it. And at one point, she knocked lightly on the door as if, you know, someone were coming to your house. It wasn't a loud bang. And she was immediately put in handcuffs and walked away.

Are you serious? No, you are not. She's not under arrest. While handcuffed, while a bunch of activists and protesters caught that moment on tape. Cite the violation. Cite the code. What is she in violation of? I want you to cite the code. Cite the code. Cite it. Cite the code. Cite the code. Cite it. I want you to cite the code. Cite the code. And Nick, what is the reaction to this law being so quickly passed and signed into

law beyond Georgia? Well, the reaction is almost as swift as the passing, as Democrats across the country denounce this effort as being harsh and restrictive in creating new barriers to the ballot box. President Biden himself called the effort sick and un-American. And what Biden knows and what Democrats across the country know is that what just happened in Georgia is poised to happen in states across the country. We'll be right back. So Nick, if President Biden and fellow Democrats are right to see Georgia as one of many states poised to pass these kinds of voting

restrictions. Where else are we starting to see these measures being introduced? Well, you could almost look at any state across the country for restrictions being introduced. The Brennan Center found that there were more than 250 voting-related bills in 43 different states across the country. And that number might have even gone up since, you know, the weekend. But where we're seeing the kind of greatest likelihood of some pretty impactful pieces of legislation moving is in Texas, in Arizona, and in Florida, three states that also have complete Republican control of both the state legislatures and the governorship. Right. And three states that are

very much like Georgia in that they're battleground states. Exactly. Florida, the most traditional of all swing states. Texas is like Georgia in that it's experiencing a kind of increasing population shift that's leading it more towards seeing it possibly go purple, if not blue. And Arizona, which like Georgia, did actually turn blue for the first time in years in the presidential election, and now has two Democratic United States senators for the first time in decades, just like Georgia.

So there's a pretty clear pattern starting to emerge here of Republican state lawmakers sensing in these states that their grip on power is loosening and taking action to try to restrict voting in ways that would perhaps allow them to hold on to that power. Exactly. And you're even seeing some similar proposals that you saw in Georgia appear in other states. In Florida, Republicans there are looking to restrict the availability and utilization of drop boxes. In Arizona, Republican lawmakers are looking to basically make it easier for

state and local election officials to clean the voter rolls. It's known as purging when they can remove voters who weren't active in recent elections from their registration. And in Texas, they're bringing a host of proposals that are very similar to Georgia. One is they're imposing an early voting restriction that would limit the hours that early voting is permitted from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., which would essentially ban the 24-hour voting locations that were in Harris County, home to Houston, last November. Hmm. Nick, the similarity of these proposals would seem to suggest a fair bit of coordination. So what have you found about that? Well, there's multiple groups that are working behind the scenes to push these new voting

restrictions. There's conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, who has publicly taken credit when Georgia's law passed last week. They've been sending around what they consider their best practices, and often you'll see laws that very similarly reflect the language in those best practices. At the party level, there are two, quote-unquote, election integrity committees, one within the Republican National Committee and one within the Republican State Leadership Conference, which is the state legislator committee. And both of those committees are looking to bring some form of coordination and organization to this effort to restrict voting. The one amongst the Republican state legislatures in particular is hoping to draft what's been described to me as an e-notebook of statutory language, executive orders, anything that's been tested and withstood either court challenges or is just considered a best practice for the Republican Party are going to deliver legislative language to these state legislatures that they know is most likely to pass legal muster and become law.

Exactly. But of course, Nick, this larger coordination would seem to undercut the idea that this is some kind of organic state-by-state response to allegations of fraud or fears of fraud by Republican voters. And it raises the prospect that this is actually just a national electoral strategy being pursued by national Republicans. In a way, it can actually be both. I think what has to be taken into account here is just how core the question of voting rights and questioning the 2020 election has become within the Republican base. It's almost as animating right now as some of the core cultural issues like abortion has been in terms of some of their priorities and what they want to see their legislators focusing on. So if you look at Georgia, where, you know, nearly 80 bills and resolutions were spilled on the floor relating to voting, there wasn't necessarily much coordination there. But what I think happens afterwards, and I think what you're seeing

across the country, is there is now a movement by some of these outside groups and by some of the arms of the Republican Party apparatus so that they don't necessarily lose the momentum and the opportunity that they see here. Hmm. So that leaves us with the inevitable question. Will this effort work by Republicans? effort work by Republicans? Do we expect these measures to keep passing in states like Florida and Arizona and Texas? And do we expect them to help Republicans hold on to power? Well, there's no reason to think that in any of these states where Republicans control both the legislature and the governorship, that they won't continue passing these bills to either restrict voting or set up new barriers to the ballot box. Now, federal courts may strike these laws down as illegal. That's certainly a possibility. And congressional Democrats are

trying to block them with a major voting rights bill in Congress, which has already passed the House, but faces a pretty uphill battle in the Senate. But the question of how successful these bills and laws will be for Republicans is a layered and kind of open-ended debate. And let me just give you an example. In the 2018 Georgia governor's race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp, there was a host of actions taken by Governor Kemp, who at that point was Secretary of State, that was viewed as having an outsized impact on voters of color, from purging voter rolls to delaying the registration of different voters whose names didn't perfectly match. And Stacey Abrams lost in a very close race and has since claimed that it was the result

of these changes and voter suppression. race and has since claimed that it was the result of these changes and voter suppression. And many Democrats believe that where Georgia is today is in part because of the energy and the motivation that the 2018 governor's race has brought to the base of the Democratic Party and the voters in Georgia. Right. There's potentially a version of this where efforts to restrict Democratic voting ends up energizing Democratic voting in exactly the way Republicans did not intend. to vote has been questioned or attempted to be restricted. That can be a motivating factor, an energizing factor. And you wonder if the Republicans continue doing this in these battleground states, in these purple states, trying to restrict voting, could it completely backfire? Could it actually animate the growing Democratic base there to turn out and flip these states blue?

And what will be the first big test of that question? Whether or not these laws will help Republicans or help Democrats? Well, looking ahead to the 2022 midterms, perhaps the most important state will be Georgia. 2022 midterms, perhaps the most important state will be Georgia. It has a very highly anticipated governor's race where although she hasn't necessarily said whether she intends to run or not, Stacey Abrams is likely seen as challenging Governor Kemp again. And you also have Senator Raphael Warnock, who is, again, the first Black man to ever be elected senator from the state of Georgia in history, up for a quick reelection after just winning in January against a Republican challenger.

So Georgia will again be at the top of the nation's attention and garnering among the most interest, most money, and most outside support to kind of test whether these new laws will indeed have an impact benefiting one party or the other. And so the first battleground state to pass these pretty sweeping voting restrictions since the 2020 election is likely to deliver the most meaningful verdict on which party they will ultimately benefit. Absolutely. Georgia is the state that raised the question for us here. And Georgia may indeed end up providing the answer. Nick, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thanks, Michael. Nick, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. Tomorrow on The Daily, my colleague, Astead Herndon, speaks to Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock about his experience with voting rights and race. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down. On Monday, President Biden pleaded with state leaders to maintain or reimpose mask mandates as COVID-19 cases surge and fears of a new wave of infections mount. Mask up. Mask up. It's a patriotic duty.

It's the only way we ever get back to normal. Several states, including Texas, Mississippi, Iowa, Montana, and North Dakota, have ended their mask mandates prematurely, according to federal health officials. And... We plan to prove to you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Chauvin was anything other than innocent on May 25th of 2020. On the first day of the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd, prosecutors said that witness testimony and video evidence

would show that Chauvin's actions led to Floyd's death and were in no way the result of split-second judgments by an officer. This case is not about split-second decision-making. In 9 minutes and 29 seconds, there are 479 seconds, not a split-second amount. That's what this case is about. Finally. After six days, crews of diggers and a flotilla of tugboats successfully dislodged the 220,000-ton cargo ship from the muddy banks of the Suez Canal, ending a crisis in global trade that had held up tens of billions of dollars in cargo. Soon after, hundreds of ships delayed by the incident sounded their horns in celebration

and began their journey through the canal. Today's episode was produced by Austin Mitchell, Aastha Chaturvedi, and Luke Vanderplug. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and Paige Cowan, and engineered by Dan Powell. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilbaro. See you tomorrow.