Georgia officials have touted their elections systems as the best in the nation, but that has not stopped attacks from different sides of the aisle ahead of the presidential election in November.
The Peach State is expected to be one of the most competitive states in the presidential race. President Joe Biden narrowly defeated former President Donald Trump in the state in 2020 en route to the White House. With the general election fewer than 10 months away, Vice President Kamala Harris made a trip to Atlanta on Tuesday and slammed the state’s election systems as “anti-voter.”
“When we look at the state of Georgia, in many ways, it is ground zero on this issue, both in terms of Georgia’s history of fighting for the right of people to express their dreams and goals for their country through the exercise of their right to vote. Georgia, of course, the home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the home of John Lewis, of Andy Young, and, of course, many of the leaders who are at this table,” Harris said before a roundtable with voting rights activists on Tuesday.
“Yet we have seen in the state of Georgia, by example of what is happening in the country, anti-voter laws — laws that have limited drop boxes, have made it illegal to even provide food and water to people standing in line often for hours,” she added.
Harris, Biden, and other Democrats have attacked the Peach State’s voting laws, specifically the 2021 Senate Bill 202. SB 202 prevented advocates from giving food, drink, and gifts to voters in line, required showing state-issued ID when applying for absentee ballots, and outlined procedures for early and mail-in voting. The Biden administration tried unsuccessfully to have a federal court enjoin several parts of the law.
Democrats have regularly claimed the laws were voter suppression despite record early voting in the 2022 elections, the first statewide general election with the new law in place. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger slammed Harris’s visit to the Peach State in a statement on Tuesday, defending his state as the “national leader in elections.”
“Georgia is a national leader in elections,” Raffensperger said. “It’s time for the Biden Administration to back down from their frivolous lawsuit and issue an apology to the voters of Georgia for continuing to push election disinformation.”
While Georgia had attacks on its voting procedures from Harris’s visit, it also faces a constitutional challenge to its election systems in federal court. The trial began on Tuesday for a case demanding that Georgia stop using Dominion Voting Systems for most in-person votes, instead calling for Judge Amy Totenberg to order the state to use paper ballots for most voters.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs alleged in court that election officials, including Raffensperger, have ignored warnings about alleged vulnerabilities regarding the systems, according to the Associated Press. They further claimed that Georgia’s election systems are “profoundly insecure, unreliable and untrustworthy” and said it could pave the way for a “disaster” that is “waiting to happen in 2024.”
Raffensperger’s office said in a news release the trial would have “the usual overblown rhetoric and conspiracy theories from activist plaintiffs on the both the left and the right.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Georgia’s election security practices are top-tier. Casting doubt on Georgia’s elections, which these plaintiffs and deniers are doing, is really trying to cast doubt on all elections. That is dangerous and wrong,” Mike Hassinger, press secretary for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said in a statement on Monday.
Conspiracy theories surrounding vulnerabilities about Dominion Voting Systems were the basis of some claims of fraud by allies of former President Donald Trump in the Peach State after Trump lost the state to Biden in 2020.
