Background: Hundreds of people wait in line for early voting on Monday, Oct. 12, 2020, in Marietta, Georgia. Some voters waited six hours or more in the former Republican stronghold of Cobb County, and lines wrapped around buildings in Democratic DeKalb County. (AP Photo/Ron Harris). Inset: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp delivers the State of the State speech, Jan. 11, 2024, in Atlanta. Kemp signed a bill into law Tuesday, May 7, that makes additional changes to Georgia’s election laws ahead of the 2024 election. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File.)
With the 2024 presidential election just six months away, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on has signed legislation that makes critical changes to the state’s election laws, including expanding the options to challenge a voter’s eligibility and making scanned ballots available publicly online.
That’s not all. Legislation enacted Tuesday also establishes that all election workers in Georgia be U.S. citizens and for this year’s presidential race, there will now be a reduction in the number of election machines. There will be only one machine per every 250 voters. The Peach State has a long reputation of voters experiencing long lines at polling places whether it is for primaries or general elections. In 2020, as The Washington Post and several other news outlets reported nationwide, voters waited six or more hours in Cobb County alone to cast their ballots.
Kemp approved the batch of laws on the last day of the Georgia General Assembly’s legislative session.
As passed, Senate Bill 189 establishes new “probable cause” criteria that allows state residents to challenge a voter’s qualifications to vote. That would include evidence that a person has died, evidence that the person has voted in another jurisdiction, evidence that the person has obtained a homestead exemption on their taxes or that they are registered to cast their ballot from a non-residential address.
Voters can also now be taken off the rolls in Georgia within 45 days of an election. That would seem to run afoul of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which the Justice Department notes bars removal of voters from voter rolls within 90 days of the election.
The American Civil Liberties Union said that the legislation Kemp signed this week was “unrealistic” and that it struck “at the heart of our democracy.” Andrea Young, the executive director of the ACLU, has also threatened to sue Kemp.
Supporters of the legislation argue the bill is a way to eliminate discrepancies and duplicative data on voter rolls; opponents say the bill will make it harder for people to vote and harder for election workers to process ballots efficiently. In 2021, Georgia passed a law permitting any single voter to issue an unlimited amount of challenges to voter eligibility and this prompted a tidal wave of challenges to ensue, gumming up early voting in the state.
Notably, part of SB 189 permits any presidential candidate from any party to appear on the ballot so long as they have been qualified in at least 20 other states. This could be a potential boon for independent candidates who may otherwise struggle to gain traction nationally.
Further, the legislation eliminates the use of QR codes on ballots for counting purposes but that won’t begin until July 2026. QR code scanning is currently in effect in the state.
And for people who are homeless in Georgia, SB 189 stipulates that they must now use a county voter registration office for their primary address, not wherever they may live or have access to temporary housing.
Absentee ballots must also be tabulated and reported an hour after polls close under the new law.
A voting rights advocacy group in Georgia, Fair Fight Action, told The Associated Press after the Republican governor signed the laws that Kemp “delivered a gift to MAGA election deniers.”
In addition to SB 189, Kemp also signed House Bill 974 and House Bill 1207 into law.
HB 974 is what Georgia Republicans like Kemp have heralded as a public transparency law. Going into the 2024 election, it will now be possible for the public to access a database where scanned ballots will be uploaded online but cleared of any personal identifying information.
It is unclear what cybersecurity measures Georgia will have in place to ensure ballot source data is not hacked or otherwise made public before any necessary redactions are made or who will be performing quality control on redactions, if any. A representative for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
HB 974 does state, however, that “digital images of the scanned ballots created as part of the preliminary tabulation process shall be posted no later than 5:00 PM on the second Friday following the day of the election” and that the postings must be supplemented with “any additional ballot images” through the final certification of the election.
By signing HB 1207, Kemp has now enforced a requirement across the state that all election workers be U.S. citizens. The law also reduces the number of voting machines at every polling location. There are only allowed to be one machine for every 250 voters. For perspective, in 2022, local Georgia outlet WXIA confirmed with the state secretary that were at least 7,008,203 active voters. Importantly, active is also considered different from “total” voters.
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