(ReliableNews.org) – The 2020 presidential election was one of the most contentious in American history. Georgia was at the center of the controversy. Now, the governor has signed a new election law.
On May 7, Kemp signed SB 189 into law. The legislation lists the reasons the state can remove people from the voter rolls. Those reasons now include a nonresidential address, a tax exemption form that lists a primary residence somewhere else, death, and evidence of a voter casting a ballot or registering in another district. The state will also use the National Change of Address list to determine if it should remove someone, though that won’t be exclusively used.
Homeless people will now have to use the county’s voter registration office as their address instead of the place they are staying at. This could make it more difficult for them to vote if their new polling location is far away.
Kemp has faced allegations of voter purging in the past. In 2017, when he was Georgia’s Secretary of State and running for governor, he removed more than half a million voters from the rolls. Some of those voters tried to cast ballots in the 2018 election, only to discover they weren’t registered any longer. Two years later, in 2019, Kemp was governor, and the new secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, removed more than 300,000 more voters from the rolls.
Opponents of the new bill have argued it will enable people to carry out more attacks on voters. They’re also concerned it would disenfranchise legitimate voters, like those who live at the same place where their business is located. Under the new bill, that could be reason enough to remove a voter from the polls.
Andrea Young, the ACLU of Georgia’s executive director, threatened to sue. She said the civil rights organization “will see the governor in court.”
Proponents of the bill maintain it will make elections more secure.
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