Peach Tree Times

President Joe Biden has called Georgia’s recently passed election law, SB202, “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “a blatant attack on the Constitution,” claims that supporters of the law believe are unsubstantiated and misleading.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board, SB202 allows for three weeks of early voting, Sunday voting, two days of Saturday voting, and no-excuse absentee voting. Georgia’s new law also replaces signature-matching with voter ID, in response to 2,400 ballots in 2018 being rejected because of signature issues.

In addition, third parties will not be able to give gifts—such as food or drink—to voters in line to guard against electioneering, and ballot drop-boxes will become a permanent fixture in Georgia elections.

"Republicans in Georgia ... rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote," Biden said. "This law, like so many others being pursued by Republicans in statehouses across the country, is a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.”

In a recent Senate Committee hearing, Election Transparency Initiative Executive Director Ken Cuccinelli denounced claims of racism and said the law would make voting more secure in Georgia.

“When I hear people like the President of the United States throw around the notion of cleaning up our elections by saying it's a new Jim Crow, it's offensive to the real thing,” Cuccinelli said. “It’s like people claiming racism as an excuse – when there isn't racism – to accomplish other goals. It also diminishes occurrences of actual racism.”

A History Channel analysis of Jim Crow laws from 1880 to 1965 states that the first form of actual Jim Crow suppression was mandating that citizens must pass literacy tests in order to vote. In 1880, 76% of black men in the south were illiterate compared to 21% of white men.

In 1900, only half of black men could read whereas 88% of white men could, additionally 11 states required poll taxes. When Georgia adopted a poll tax in 1877, it resulted in a 50% drop in black voter turnout.

According to the Lawyers Democracy Fund (LDF), a variety of lawsuits have been filed against SB202 asserting that the voting law violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the 14th Amendment by “placing an unconstitutional burden on the fundamental right to vote.”

The LDF argues that the law does not violate Section 2 of the VRA because the law implements “similar, valid election procedures already implemented by numerous states across the country, demonstrating the degree to which Senate Bill 202’s provisions are solidly within the mainstream.”

Cuccinelli also discussed the topic of voter ID in his Senate testimony.

“Voter I.D. has been particularly politicized by the radical left propaganda machine,” Cuccinelli said. “Yet despite six months of media-assisted assaults on the basic common-sense need for voter I.D., the American people have been unmoved in their overwhelming support for this basic election integrity measure. It might explain why some very high-profile propounders of the false 'voter I.D. is racist' propaganda – like Stacey Abrams – have suddenly flip-flopped to get on the right side of the polling.”