Opponents have decried Georgia’s new voting law as designed to disenfranchise minority voters, while supporters argue it expands voting rights.
Corporations like Delta Airlines, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola have spoken out publicly against the measure and Major League Baseball moved its All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver.
So, which is it? Is it “Jim Crow on steroids,” as President Joseph R. Biden said last week, or does it expand voting access, as per Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp?
Here, Marc Meredith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, shares five things to know about the new law:
1. The process of mail balloting changed but not as dramatically as it could have
Five things to know about Georgia s new voting law upenn.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from upenn.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Michael Pope reports
Who s on first? In many cases, it s the winner of an election. That s because academic research consistently shows that the first candidate on a ballot or an early candidate have an edge.
Credit Mallory Noe-Payne/Radio IQ
Darren Grant at Sam Houston University in Texas has researched ballot order, and he says the reason for this remains a mystery. One theory is that people work through the ballot, and they have kind of a good-enough standard. And so they re going down a list of options and as soon as they find a candidate that they think is good enough, then they vote for that person and then just move on to the next race on the ballot.
Thu 25 Feb 2021 06.00 EST
Last modified on Mon 5 Apr 2021 12.01 EDT
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A well-connected conservative group in Wisconsin nearly succeeded in forcing the state to kick nearly 17,000 eligible voters off its rolls ahead of the 2020 election, new state data reveals.
The group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (Will), caused a national uproar in late 2019 when it successfully convinced a county judge to order the state to immediately remove more than 232,000 people Wisconsin suspected of moving homes from the state’s voter rolls. The state, relying on government records, had sent a postcard to all of those voters asking them to confirm their address, and Will sought to remove anyone who had not responded within 30 days.
Study authors believe stronger enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act, which prevents states from removing voter registrants from rolls without a clear indication that a registrant has moved or died, might help relieve issues.