Matt Katz: Hi everybody. I'm Matt Katz in for Tanzina Vega and this is The Takeaway. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, we watched closely as states grappled with how to administer elections safely during a global health pandemic, and in many cases that meant expanding access to the ballot. More people voted early and by absentee ballot and that led to a higher voter turnout than we've had for a presidential election in 120 years.

At the same time, a false narrative emerged about a rigged election, a conspiracy theory championed by former President Donald Trump. Now a flurry of legislation in states across the country aims to restrict voter access, and that brings us to Georgia. Yesterday, lawmakers in the state debated election law for hours at a marathon session of the general assembly known as Crossover Day.

Mark Niesse: Crossover Day was Monday in the Georgia general assembly. It was the deadline for a bill to pass either the House or the Senate, and then be considered by the other chamber from now on.

Matt: That's Mark Niesse, a reporter covering the Georgia government for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Mark: If a bill is a House bill, it had to pass the House by yesterday and if it's a Senate bill, it had to pass the Senate by yesterday, and anything that didn't pass on Monday is not quite dead because it could still be attached to another bill, but definitely much harder to make it into law.

Matt: Mark was in the Senate gallery yesterday for the hours long debate that led to the Georgia Senate passing a bill that restricts absentee voting, and it passed by just one vote. What does this all mean for Georgia voters? I asked Mark what the vibe was like in the Georgia Senate.

Mark: It was very divided between Republicans and Democrats. It's a very partisan issue over voting rights and how voters should be able to access the ballot. We had Democrats and Republicans on very polarized sides and that tension came through in the speeches that they delivered for over three hours yesterday afternoon.

We saw Democrats very passionately saying that the election wasn't stolen and that these bills, these proposals are built on what they said are lies from President Donald Trump. Then we had Republicans saying, no, this has been going on for a long time and there are problems with our election system and the time is right to correct what they view as issues by, for example, their biggest item, restricting no-excuse absentee balloting in Georgia.

Matt: The debate that was playing out on the floor, was it reflected outside? Were there protesters also from both sides going at it?

Mark: That's right. There were protesters inside and outside the Capitol while the debate was going on. Inside the Capitol there was a sit-in on the Capitol stairs where some of the protestors wore chains to show that their voting rights and their voices were potentially being silenced. Then outside, you had more traditional rallies with people using bullhorns and holding signs and marching both in Liberty Plaza, which is the public gathering area, and also closer to lawmakers, around the entrances of the capitals, urging them to either from the voting rights protestors, not pass the bill and from those who are more Republican and Trump's supporters, asking legislators to crack down on voting access so that in their perception, there would be less chance of any potential fraud.

Matt: Mark, let's drill down on one of these election-related pieces of legislation, SB 241, passed on a party line vote 29 to 20 with Republicans in favor. What's in this bill?

Mark: This is a big bill. It does a lot of things to change George's voting rules. The headline item is that it would eliminate no excuse absentee voting, which is a law in Georgia since 2005, that has allowed any voter to request an absentee ballot without having to provide a reason. Under this bill, absentee voting would only be allowed for people who are at least 65 years old, have a physical disability, or are out of town on election day. The bill does a lot of other things as well.

It requires absentee voters to provide ID in the form of a driver's license or state ID number or a photocopy of other documentation. It allows the legislature to throw out emergency rules set by the state election board, for example drop boxes, which were allowed for voters to drop off their ballots last year. It creates a hotline to the Attorney General's office for voters to report irregularities.

It bans early voting buses that were used in Fulton county, which is Georgia's most populous county in Atlanta and it has a provision, they were concerned about the vote count taking so long in Georgia. The bill also requires election officials to continue counting ballots until they're done, even if it takes days. Election officials would have to work in shifts to comply with that part of this legislation.

Matt: Some of these restrictions seem aimed at trying to prevent election fraud. Are there cases of election fraud in Georgia that have been so significant that they've swayed elections? Where are Republicans basing these efforts on? What are they basing these efforts on?

Mark: There is no evidence of fraud that would have been in the amount that could have swayed the presidential or US Senate elections in Georgia. If you look back over the years, there has been fraud on smaller scales in smaller elections, but that didn't happen in these large presidential and Senate races in Georgia. A lot of the fears about voting fraud in Georgia are based on conspiracy theories or mistruths or lies from people who believe that Donald Trump won in Georgia. There are also conspiracy theories about dead people voting or ballot box stuffing or fake registrations, and none or very little of that is true. If you look at the history of voter fraud cases in Georgia, they're almost always very minor.

Matt: Right. Then the backdrop to all of this is not just that Joe Biden won Georgia by a hair, but then Democrats narrowly won both of the states' two US Senate seats. This was a consequential election in Georgia this past year. Democratic voters were far more likely to exercise the vote by mail option in those elections. Is this pushback by Republicans who control the legislature against not just Democratic voters, but also Black voters who are more likely to use some of these voting options that are available to them by law and are now potentially being taken away?

Mark: Yes, that's the argument from voting rights organizations, is that these policies are the kind of election rules that would disproportionately impact Black voters. There was a study from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University that showed for example, that absentee voting among Black voters in Georgia greatly increased between the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Now after that increase, we're seeing potential rollbacks in absentee voting. Another example, there's another bill that passed the state House that would limit weekend early voting days. If you look at the data, you can see that on Sunday voting, Black voters disproportionately vote more. If you reduce Sunday voting access, that would affect Black voters to a greater degree than voters of other races. They're making an argument that these policies do have a racial impact and I'm pretty certain that if these bills were to become law, we would see court cases arguing that these bills have a discriminatory effect.

Matt: The former gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, I saw an interview, she called these voting bills taken together as Jim Crow in a suit and tie, which of course refers to Georgia's history in the Jim Crow era and restricting, finding ways over many decades to restrict Black voters from accessing the ballot.

Mark: That's right and that's this ongoing voting rights battle in Georgia that Stacey Abrams has been fighting for years now. She has seen a path both toward electoral success for Democrats, but also for greater voting access for all voters. That's her main platform. She has been trying to expand the electorate based on the belief that if more people vote, that will benefit her supporters and Democrats. That has started to show to be true because Georgia is this changing and growing state.

It is becoming more diverse and more people are moving to the metro areas, in particular Atlanta, and these voters are more likely to be Democrats. Then you see the reaction from Republicans where they tried to do the opposite and put forward bills that instead of expand the electorate, constrict it.

Matt: Mark, it was widely noted yesterday that Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, a Republican who typically would preside over the Senate proceedings, did not do so yesterday because of his opposition to the election restrictions. That's Duncan, the lieutenant governor. Where does Governor Kemp stand? He's a Republican. Is he expected to sign these restrictions into law if they pass both chambers?

Mark: It's hard to say. Governor Kemp has not weighed in on many of these proposals. The only thing he has been clear on is that he does support proposals that would require more identification to vote an absentee ballot in Georgia. But on issues like restricting no excuse absentee voting, he has not weighed in on that so far. I don't know exactly what he's thinking, but I suspect that he doesn't want to wade into an issue that may not ever reach his desk.

He doesn't have to make the decision about whether to sign or veto the bill if it doesn't pass the house of representatives after it passed the Senate on Monday. I think his thoughts might be known at a more strategic juncture. If the House, for example, doesn't move forward with the proposal to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, well, then Governor Kemp doesn't have to risk alienating his base or angering the other side by taking a position one way or the other.

Matt: It might not reach his desk? Is it possible that some of these proposals do not end up passing the legislature?

Mark: I think it's likely that some of these proposals don't pass the legislature. I think the one that we know has broad-based support among the Republican majority in Georgia is the call for more ID before voting absentee, but all the other proposals, it's wildly unpredictable what will happen. For example, the no-excuse absentee voting restrictions that passed the Senate yesterday. Back in January, the speaker of George's house, David Ralston, said that you'd have to make a pretty strong case to him to convince him that the election laws need to be changed pertaining to who can vote absentee in Georgia.

That was his position in January. Ultimately it's not entirely his decision, it's the will of the committees and his party, but I think he sent a message in early January that it wasn't something that was a top priority of his. Also limits, that kind of limit on absentee voting, wasn't in the House version of the election proposals that passed. I don't know if that will, how much consideration that will get on the House side, now that it will start considering this bill.

Matt: It seems that former Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon who fought for voting rights, could potentially still play a part in Georgia politics, because if the US House of Representatives, they have this bill H.R.1, a Voting Rights Act that's named after John Lewis. If that were to pass and be signed by President Biden, do you have a sense of what that could mean for efforts like these to restrict voting in Georgia and anywhere around the country?

Mark: Well, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act which is pending in Congress would reinstate federal oversight in states that have a history of discriminatory voting practices, such as Georgia. Previously up until 2013, the federal government did review voting changes before they could become law to make sure that they didn't have a discriminatory impact. That was under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was a landmark law passed at the height of the civil rights movement. But in 2013, the US Supreme Court ruled that federal oversight requirements were no longer valid.

What this bill in Congress would do, would create a new standard for which states were covered by the federal government for review of voting changes and voting laws before they could go into effect. That bill hasn't passed. Right now it's just up to the state of Georgia and up to the courts based on

other parts of the Voting Rights Act and other laws such as the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. There are a lot of voting laws in this country, but there's no pre-review by the department of justice like there used to be.

Matt: Mark Niesse is a reporter covering the Georgia government for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mark, thanks so much for your reporting on all of this.

Mark: Thanks for having me on.

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