U.S. civil rights groups sue Georgia over voting restrictions, as Biden attacks law (updated)
26/03/2021 20:01
(Adds Biden comments, poll data)
By Joseph Ax
March 26 (Reuters) - A coalition of civil rights groups has
filed a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia's sweeping new
voting restrictions, arguing that the Republican-backed law is
intended to make it harder for people – particularly Black
voters – to cast ballots.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden - who became the first
Democratic presidential candidate in three decades to win
Georgia in November's election - accused Republicans there and
in other states of mounting a broad assault on voting rights.
Among other limits, the law imposes stricter identification
requirements, limits drop boxes, gives lawmakers the power to
take over local elections and shortens the early voting period
for all runoff elections. It also makes it a misdemeanor for
people to offer food and water to voters waiting in line.
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The legislation has alarmed Democrats, who just months ago
celebrated historic wins in the presidential election and two
Senate campaigns in Georgia that helped deliver the White House
and U.S. Senate control to their party in Washington.
"It's an atrocity," Biden told reporters on Friday, shortly
after comparing the restrictions to racist "Jim Crow" laws that
for decades kept Black Southerners from full voting rights.
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He has urged Congress to pass Democratic-backed legislation
that would require automatic registration, expand absentee
voting and temper voter ID laws. Thus far, Republican opposition
in the divided U.S. Senate has stymied that effort.
The Georgia lawsuit was filed in Atlanta federal court just
hours after the legislation became law on Thursday by the New
Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter Fund and Rise, Inc. Marc
Elias, a Democratic lawyer who spearheaded the party's election
legal efforts last year, is representing the groups.
"These provisions lack any justification for their
burdensome and discriminatory effects on voting," the lawsuit
said.
"Instead, they represent a hodgepodge of unnecessary
restrictions that target almost every aspect of the voting
process but serve no legitimate purpose or compelling state
interest other than to make absentee, early, and election-day
voting more difficult — especially for minority voters."
Biden said that restrictions were "outrageous" and
"un-American."
"We have a moral and Constitutional obligation to act," he
said, possibly foreshadowing a coming legal fight over the
measure.
Other Republican-controlled state legislatures are pursuing
voting restrictions in key battleground states, including
Florida and Arizona, after former President Donald Trump
repeatedly blamed his loss to President Joe Biden on massive
voter fraud without evidence.
Republicans have defended the legislation as necessary to
make "our elections fair and secure," as Georgia Governor Brian
Kemp put it when signing the bill into law on Thursday.
Democrats and voting rights advocates decried the
restrictions, which passed the legislature solely with
Republican support, as a revival of racially discriminatory
voting laws that will harm voters in minority communities, which
are already plagued by long lines and inadequate election
infrastructure.
As he contested his national loss to Biden, Trump focused
much of his energy in Georgia. At one point, he personally
called the state's Republican secretary of state, Brad
Raffensperger, and urged him to "find" votes Trump claimed had
gone missing.
That phone call is part of a criminal investigation by state
prosecutors into whether Trump broke election laws by pressuring
officials to alter the results.
Trump's assertions about voter fraud have reinforced
long-standing Republican warnings that stricter laws are needed,
despite research showing that such cases are vanishingly rare.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll in February, 62% of Republicans said
they were "very concerned" that elections were tainted by
ineligible people casting votes. Weeks before the election in
October, 47% of Republicans expressed the same level of concern.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Additional reporting by Trevor
Hunnicutt and Chris Kahn
Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Alistair Bell)
((joseph.ax@thomsonreuters.com; 1-646-223-6594 1-917-848-0813;
Reuters Messaging: joseph.ax.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))