Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who was liked when he refused to play ball with Trump, is now back to being hated again for having signed a new voting bill that Biden called “UnAmerican” and “sick.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp drew protests Thursday as he signed into law a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections that includes new restrictions on voting by mail and greater legislative control over how elections are run.
Democrats and voting rights groups say the law will disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.
Grace Panetta provides a good run-down of the bill, but one aspect of the law caught my eye as it was decried as criminalizing providing people waiting on line from being provided food and drink. It’s as if the state has criminalized providing humanitarian aid to the starving. What sort of monsters would do such a thing?
Electioneering within a certain distance of the polling place has long been unlawful. But this isn’t electioneering, right? Unless the bottles of water say “vote Dem and we’ll give you $1400 free!!!” But what if the Republicans stroll down the line of waiting voters to hand out pies to those who promise to vote Rep? And Dems hand out pulled pork to those who promise to vote Dem? Well, of course that’s not what they mean, or what you are talking about when you decry the harshness of his travesty.
There are people who will find waiting on line, particularly if the lines are long, to be difficult. Some, for example, may be diabetic and need something to eat. Others will get thirsty and could become dehydrated. They could, of course, bring something with them, like a donut or a bottle of Gatorade. But people forget, or don’t realize in advance how long the line will be and are caught short. What about the children?
The law makes it a crime to give out bottled water.
The bill would make a violation a misdemeanor that carries a maximum fine of $1,000 and maximum imprisonment of up to one year in jail.
This would be outrageously excessive and would make for a fascinating trial for a defendant to be tried for giving a bottle of water to a person on line. But that doesn’t mean the law can’t prohibit it.
Who doesn’t like free food, even if it’s not good pizza?
Beyond the question of what to do about violations of this proscription, this law creates a clear, easy to understand bright-line test of what cannot be done. You can’t give things for free to people waiting to vote. You can’t give them cash or donuts or water. You can’t give them things conditioned on their voting for any candidate or not. Why? Because anything else leaves open a gap big enough for a Mack truck to drive through it, and eventually it will.
Would it be wiser to leave it to the discretion of police to decide who is engaging in prohibited electioneering, vote buying, politicking to the people waiting to vote? Would a clear prohibition not be better than allowing water bottles but not Coke or Pepsi? Or a bottle of Dom Perignon?
The complaint is that this isn’t about electioneering, but about voter suppression.
For years, voting rights advocates have organized efforts to give away bottles of water or food near voting sites where residents sometimes wait in line for hours to vote. Voters in black-majority neighborhoods have had disproportionate waiting times.
Long lines to vote, particularly if they disproportionately happen in black neighborhoods, reflect a problem in need of fixing. But is seizing the opportunity to use those lines to influence voters by giving out free stuff the solution, or would it be shorter lines? That people are constrained to wait for extended lengths of time to vote is an impediment, but the solution isn’t to provide food and beverages to buy votes, but to make lines to vote shorter.
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