STATE UPDATES
A federal court judge has handed both sides in a lawsuit over a controversial election reform bill the General Assembly passed two years ago a partial victory and a partial defeat.
Judge J.P. Boulee granted a preliminary injunction Friday to civil rights and voting rights groups temporarily blocking portions of Senate Bill 202 that restricted volunteers from providing food and water to voters waiting in long lines at the polls. In a partial win for the plaintiffs, the judge declared the ban would apply only within 150 feet of a polling place.
Boulee also threw out a provision requiring voters to include their birthdate on absentee ballot envelopes.
“Today’s decisions remove some of SB202’s barriers to absentee and in-person voting in the 2024 election cycle,” said Rahul Garabadu, senior voting rights staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Georgia chapter. “The court recognized that voters should not be disenfranchised for forgetting to write their birthdate on their absentee ballot envelope, or arrested for offering food or drink to voters in line outside the 150-foot zone around polling locations.”
But the judge also gave Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reason to celebrate. Boulee upheld portions of the legislation banning ballot harvesting – the gathering and submitting of absentee ballots by third parties – and limiting the number of absentee ballot drop boxes. “Georgia has one of the best absentee ballot systems in the country,” Raffensperger said. “We have no-excuse absentee ballots, with voters verified with photo ID and who are given an opportunity to cure any discrepancy prior to their ballot being rejected. It’s a system that works well.”
The plaintiffs had brought the lawsuit before last year’s elections. But the judge declined to issue a ruling last August, arguing that changing election laws close to an election would confuse voters.
The General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed SB202 in 2021 after Democrats had scored major gains in Georgia in the 2020 election cycle, including Joe Biden’s victory over incumbent GOP President Donald Trump and the capture of both of the Peach State’s U.S. Senate seats.
With the COVID-19 pandemic going strong, absentee voting played a major role in the 2020 elections, with drop boxes being used for the first time.
Georgia case against Trump just beginning
The indictment of former President Donald Trump in Fulton County Aug. 14 on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia was the culmination of two and a half years of investigation.
But in another sense, the case is only beginning and is likely to drag out beyond a 2024 election that could pit Republican Trump in a rematch with Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.
That’s because Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis cast a wide net in putting together a racketeering case against not only Trump but 18 other defendants and 30 unindicated co-conspirators.
Each one of the defendants is accused of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a charge that carries a minimum prison sentence of five years.
“RICO trials are legendarily long affairs,” said Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, a New York City-based progressive nonprofit founded during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In 41 counts, the 97-page indictment charges Trump and the other defendants with participating in a “criminal enterprise” that tried to convince highranking state and federal officials – including then-Vice President Mike Pence – to throw out the Electoral College results in favor of Biden in Georgia and a half dozen other swing states and declare Trump the winner of the electoral votes in those states.
Three of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case are accused of participating as “fake” electors and casting their electoral votes for Trump even though Biden carried the Peach State.
Another participant in that meeting, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, could face separate charges because of a court ruling prohibiting Willis from investigating him due to a conflict of interest.
The scheme allegedly included filing false statements, lying to members of Georgia’s General Assembly, harassing and intimidating two rankand- file Fulton County election workers, illegally accessing voting machines and data in Coffee County. and committing perjury to cover up the conspiracy.
The indictment alleges 161 criminal “acts” committed by the defendants, beginning with Trump’s nationally televised speech the night of the 2020 election claiming victory stretching to September of last year, when one of Trump’s lawyers was accused of lying to the special grand jury Willis formed to investigate the case.
Trump struck back against the indictment, labeling Willis on the former president’s social media site Truth Social as a “rabid partisan” out to sink his hopes of winning back the presidency.
“Willis has strategically stalled the investigation to try to … interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign,” Trump wrote. “These corrupt Democrat attempts will fail.”
