because baseball is moving the all star game and the draft out of GA due to the new voter laws.
How anyone can support the GOP is beyond me lol. Let’s boycott baseball because they support civil rights. Any of you GOPers care to chime in how you can support such a corrupt group? Or is that just the cost of “lower taxes and small government”
So what are the problems with Georgia's law? It looks like people can get food and water; just not within 150 feet of the polling place, which is the same law for candidates and lobbyists. I don't exactly think a bottle of Dasani and bag of Cheetos is a bribe, but I see the point.
The other thing is the Sec of State losing his role to be replaced by a non-elected official appointed by the legislature. Doesn't seem problematic on its face (though it does smack of reacting to the Sec of State not handing the state to Trump like he was supposed to).
It would be naïve to not consider the possibility that this is a power grab and/or voting suppression move, but I'm not necessarily seeing it directly.
Most of the law looks good; particilarly local and third party ballot (and fake ballot) mailing
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
So what are the problems with Georgia's law? It looks like people can get food and water; just not within 150 feet of the polling place, which is the same law for candidates and lobbyists. I don't exactly think a bottle of Dasani and bag of Cheetos is a bribe, but I see the point.
The other thing is the Sec of State losing his role to be replaced by a non-elected official appointed by the legislature. Doesn't seem problematic on its face (though it does smack of reacting to the Sec of State not handing the state to Trump like he was supposed to).
It would be naïve to not consider the possibility that this is a power grab and/or voting suppression move, but I'm not necessarily seeing it directly.
Most of the law looks good; particilarly local and third party ballot (and fake ballot) mailing
I hate when people post articles, but here I go. To me the most telling thing is that on its face it says that everything that communities of color did to help ballot access and stop the long lines has been revoked, but don’t take my word for it take The Nation’s.
“The law’s worst features? There are so many. “You don’t do it justice by pulling out individual pieces,” warns voting rights attorney Marc Elias, who’s suing to overturn the bill as unconstitutional, especially for its particular impact on Black voters.
But we have to wrap our minds around it, so here’s just a start: Voters who request absentee ballots will now have to send in a copy of state-validated ID when they do so (and many either don’t have one or can’t easily copy it); the number of drop boxes to return those ballots will be cut dramatically, limited only to early-voting sites (rather than libraries and other public buildings), and they will close four days before the election (when it’s too late to reliably mail ballots). Providing food and water to voters in long lines is now, officially, classified by law as a crime (thanks, Brad!). Perhaps worst of all, the state legislature is empowered to step in and take control of county elections in the event it sees something wrong—and in 2020, “something wrong” was too many Democrats voting.
Oh, and the GOP-gerrymandered legislature also removed the secretary of state as the head of the state board of election—punishment for Raffensperger’s mostly fair administration of the presidential balloting and the runoff—and put itself in charge.
Brian Kemp signed the new law immediately, outrageously seated beneath a painting of an antebellum Georgia plantation and flanked by seven white male lawmakers. Just outside, state police arrested Democratic state Representative Park Cannon, who is Black, for the crime of knocking on Kemp’s door. Lots of Georgians, and smart outsiders, think that ugly tableau was intentional, to assure demoralized Trump voters that everything in Georgia is returning to the racist way it ever was; now they can relax and vote Republican again, no matter what Trump says.
That racist tableau still won’t endear Kemp to Trump, who is looking to support a 2022 primary challenger as payback for Kemp’s crime of certifying his election defeat last year. It is also likely to inflame Georgia Democrats next November, when Warnock will be running again, and many expect, or at least hope, voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams will seek a rematch against the vote-suppressing Republican governor.
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When it comes to that November election, Kemp might have been signing his own political death warrant when he signed SB 202. Certainly some political observers think so. Cook Political Reporteditor Dave Wasserman tweeted that the Georgia GOP “just handed Democrats their best turnout tool for 2022 & beyond.” Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called the criminalizing of providing food and water a “Republican blunder” that could galvanize Georgia Democrats, especially those of color, to new heights of participation.
Seth Bringman of Fair Fight Action, the Abrams-led group that works for voting rights, certainly hopes that’s true. If legal efforts to challenge SB 202 fail, and congressional action to shore up voting rights stalls, “then we’ll have to organize around it,” he told me. “It’s true that earlier efforts at voter suppression have empowered voters here to take action,” Bringman added. But he notes that it’s tough to know how many voters were suppressed by those measures, even as others turned out. And putting the onus back on Black voters who have been discouraged, brutalized, and even killed for exercising their right to vote, rather than on the white lawmakers who’ve historically done the brutalizing, is tough for many to take.
Despite Elias’s fair warning against itemizing the bill’s components and designating what’s worst, advocates and analysts are doing that. They have to. The provision criminalizing “line-warming,” or bringing snacks and drinks to voters stuck in long lines, has gotten the most attention in the bill. It’s got a real “What would Jesus not do?” vibe. President Biden singled it out when he attacked the entire law, calling it “sick, sick.” And its racially discriminatory intent seems clear. A lawsuit charging that SB 202 places “unconstitutional burdens on the right to vote,” brought by Elias on behalf of the New Georgia Project and others, quotes a study that found thst in the much-criticized June 2020 primary elections, “the average wait time in Georgia after polls were scheduled to close was six minutes in neighborhoods that were at least 90% white, and 51 minutes in places that were at least 90% nonwhite.”
“There’s no other way to interpret this other than that Georgia Republicans want voters of color to leave those lines and not vote,” says Fair Fight Action’s Bringman.
But other provisions could have a bigger impact, including restrictions on early voting, voter ID requirements for absentee ballots and limits on the number and the hours of ballot drop boxes. Such changes will disproportionately burden voters of color, who adopted those voter access reforms with new enthusiasm in 2020, especially given the dangers of the pandemic. Limiting those measures will also force many voters back onto those long Election Day lines, where they’ll no longer be supported by volunteers providing food and drink. Yeah, it’s a vicious—and very efficient—voter-suppression circle.
Georgia’s most recent, actual election emergency was last June’s primaries, especially in heavily Democratic counties. State Republican officials had already closed precincts, purged “inactive” voters, and conducted other voter suppression exercises in prior elections, but the problems in the primary, creating the extraordinarily long lines, were in some ways worse—or at least more obvious—than what the nation saw in the 2018 governor’s race. Stacey Abrams told me at the time that the 2020 primary mess was was “a combination of malice and incompetence.”
Those problems were widely blamed on Raffensperger, who had inherited the mess. But he in turn blamed them on county election boards in Fulton and DeKalb and other places with lots of Democrats. Elias didn’t entirely disagree: Around the country, “I’ve sued Democratic counties,” he told me. “Voting is an essential service; when it goes well, we shouldn’t act like it’s a treat.”
So those embattled county election boards took action for the November election. They secured mobile voting sites, expanded absentee voting and vote by mail, and added drop boxes for those votes. In Fulton County, they got enormous help in the form of the donation of State Farm Arena as a massive polling place. Sports were shut down during the pandemic, but fans could nonetheless troop there and cast ballots—and they did. By November, Fulton County still had lines in a few places, but the combination of early voting, mail-in voting, expanded dropboxes, mobile sites, and, yes, State Farm Arena reduced the traditional election day lines in Black counties to manageable. Those same fixes made the January runoff run more smoothly.
SB 202 says to those Georgia counties that “all those solutions that you used to fix those problems after last June? You can’t use them now,” says Mother Jones’s voting rights expert Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot and the forthcoming Minority Rule. Elias agrees. Republicans blamed Democratic counties for “creating the long lines. Now they’re preventing the amelioration of those long lines,” he says. For one thing, counties are now prohibited from accepting donations to help them solve voting problems—which some have interpreted as forbidding help from, say, liberal foundations to ease vote-counting burdens, but others believe would ban the acceptance of State Farm Arena access, and even access to churches.“
I don’t want Delta, Coke, MLB, Microsoft, etc.... replacing my vote. I am surprised everyone for campaign finance reform and anti-corporate cash in politics is on board with corporations pressuring politicians in other ways.
Like with everything, we don’t care if it helps me. We only care if it hurts me.
It is absurd right now. Cancel culture is real and on both sides.
I don’t want Delta, Coke, MLB, Microsoft, etc.... replacing my vote. I am surprised everyone for campaign finance reform and anti-corporate cash in politics is on board with corporations pressuring politicians in other ways.
Like with everything, we don’t care if it helps me. We only care if it hurts me.
It is absurd right now. Cancel culture is real and on both sides.
And.....money and corporations always have held power. Consumers standing up against corporate behaviors they don't like or supporting ones they do like is something that should be seen as a good thing, imo.
I'm all for people and corporations supporting what they believe in and fighting what they don't believe in. Having a side is a good thing, imo.
The one group can drink coke or sleep on their my pillows and the other group can avoid mlb or goya products.
Why have elections? If the power lies with CEO's and corporations there is no need to vote. Let the corporations dictate it.
I don't understand the connection? How does this impact your vote?
You can exercise your right to patronize a company, or not, but elections are still held
Are you thinking that because of people's loyalty to coke or my pillow that they will be made to think/vote in certain ways?
It is a simple connection. People voted for politicians in Georgia. Politicians passed laws. Some large corporation steps in to pressure politicians to change laws. Seems like said large corporation is exerting political power that liberals hated just years ago. You might say that corporations are responding to what its customers want, but Georgia had a vote and that is how politics should work. If the law passed is unconstitutional you fight it in court.
Coke or some other company threatening to leave a state or not expand in a state is no different than Coke dangling millions of dollars in front of politicians. I thought we wanted to get corporations out of politics? But it is okay because right now they are doing what the liberals want them to do.
I'm not taking any opinion on the law passed in Georgia. I just don't agree with boycotts of companies that have nothing to do with politics to somehow usurp the power of politicians voted in by the public. What is the point of a vote if a small group of people decide to start a twitter war against a public company until the company decides to pressure a state to change its laws?
I guess I can see the point you are making but I have no problems with companies moving to states where they respect the laws more....or threatening to do so. It can be used for good or bad - depending on a person's view I guess it is always one way or the other. I'd support the idea that it is traditionally used solely based on profit so it is nice to see some thought behind it.
This to me isn't cancel culture. Coke didn't ask others to boycott Georgia, at least that I saw
They said they disagree with some legislation passed by the state and may need to look at relocation. Pressure, yes, certainly.
What would republicans drink if Pepsi came out and said they don't want to be known as the soda choice of vote suppressors? Hansen's sucks balls. Fake colas are the worst. RC or Dr Pepper?
I'm all for people and corporations supporting what they believe in and fighting what they don't believe in. Having a side is a good thing, imo.
The one group can drink coke or sleep on their my pillows and the other group can avoid mlb or goya products.
Why have elections? If the power lies with CEO's and corporations there is no need to vote. Let the corporations dictate it.
I don't understand the connection? How does this impact your vote?
You can exercise your right to patronize a company, or not, but elections are still held
Are you thinking that because of people's loyalty to coke or my pillow that they will be made to think/vote in certain ways?
It is a simple connection. People voted for politicians in Georgia. Politicians passed laws. Some large corporation steps in to pressure politicians to change laws. Seems like said large corporation is exerting political power that liberals hated just years ago. You might say that corporations are responding to what its customers want, but Georgia had a vote and that is how politics should work. If the law passed is unconstitutional you fight it in court.
Coke or some other company threatening to leave a state or not expand in a state is no different than Coke dangling millions of dollars in front of politicians. I thought we wanted to get corporations out of politics? But it is okay because right now they are doing what the liberals want them to do.
I'm not taking any opinion on the law passed in Georgia. I just don't agree with boycotts of companies that have nothing to do with politics to somehow usurp the power of politicians voted in by the public. What is the point of a vote if a small group of people decide to start a twitter war against a public company until the company decides to pressure a state to change its laws?
People voted? If you honestly believe that why don't you meander to my friend Gerry?
Corporations should get out of politics?
Have you considered this is not politics? This is about human rights and these corporations are actually comprised of employees who are also humans, and these people should have rights? That they should have fair access to voting that the white people of Georgia outside of Atlanta have?
I'm all for people and corporations supporting what they believe in and fighting what they don't believe in. Having a side is a good thing, imo.
The one group can drink coke or sleep on their my pillows and the other group can avoid mlb or goya products.
Why have elections? If the power lies with CEO's and corporations there is no need to vote. Let the corporations dictate it.
I don't understand the connection? How does this impact your vote?
You can exercise your right to patronize a company, or not, but elections are still held
Are you thinking that because of people's loyalty to coke or my pillow that they will be made to think/vote in certain ways?
I just don't agree with boycotts of companies that have nothing to do with politics to somehow usurp the power of politicians voted in by the public.
Given what the law is in response to and what the party in power has the potential to do with it, this isn’t “politics” any more than it is when a big corporation gestures applause towards gay rights. If this was about a school funding bill or something, I might be with you.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
It's easy to think and say I'm glad to see corporations using their power to fight voter suppression laws. Those laws are a part of deep seated racism is parts of this country. They are wrong and something has to be done about it.
And yet, a part of me is very worried about how these laws are being fought. Yes, I said I was glad corporations are against voter suppression laws. But when did I ever think corporations were about progressive values? I've always believed they are about making money. And when did I want corporations to persuade people to think a certain way? That's right: never. And what will the result of an embargo (wrong word- what is it when you penalize a person or persons by removing opportunity for revenue or income?) ... anyway, what is the end result of that kind of action? Aren't those actions seen as acts of aggression? Isn't that what we've always done to other countries? And don't we usually end up at war with those other countries?
And how do people respond to that kind of aggression? Do they say, "Oh, you're right, we're sorry. We won't be racists any more." Sure, that would be great. But what is more likely to happen? I dread to think it. Things are going to get dicey. This is not going to turn out well.
That's what is going through my head right now. But please, don't jump on me and say "Whose side are you on?" I loathe racism and prejudice. I support justice. But I have also witnessed what happens in a conservative part of the country (like my present county), and I'm wondering what kind of reprisal is going to hit close to home. It's scary and it's dangerous. Is there no other way? I'm seeing a bad moon on the rise. For fuck's sake, tell me I'm wrong.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Comments
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
All the right wing free speech advocates seem very quiet... maybe they're just on vacation with the #BlueLivesMatter and #SaveTheChildren crowds?
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
You're not troubled by elected officials trying to punish corporations for their speech?
The other thing is the Sec of State losing his role to be replaced by a non-elected official appointed by the legislature. Doesn't seem problematic on its face (though it does smack of reacting to the Sec of State not handing the state to Trump like he was supposed to).
It would be naïve to not consider the possibility that this is a power grab and/or voting suppression move, but I'm not necessarily seeing it directly.
Most of the law looks good; particilarly local and third party ballot (and fake ballot) mailing
https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/03/27/what-does-georgias-new-voting-law-sb-202-do
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
“The law’s worst features? There are so many. “You don’t do it justice by pulling out individual pieces,” warns voting rights attorney Marc Elias, who’s suing to overturn the bill as unconstitutional, especially for its particular impact on Black voters.
But we have to wrap our minds around it, so here’s just a start: Voters who request absentee ballots will now have to send in a copy of state-validated ID when they do so (and many either don’t have one or can’t easily copy it); the number of drop boxes to return those ballots will be cut dramatically, limited only to early-voting sites (rather than libraries and other public buildings), and they will close four days before the election (when it’s too late to reliably mail ballots). Providing food and water to voters in long lines is now, officially, classified by law as a crime (thanks, Brad!). Perhaps worst of all, the state legislature is empowered to step in and take control of county elections in the event it sees something wrong—and in 2020, “something wrong” was too many Democrats voting.
Oh, and the GOP-gerrymandered legislature also removed the secretary of state as the head of the state board of election—punishment for Raffensperger’s mostly fair administration of the presidential balloting and the runoff—and put itself in charge.
Brian Kemp signed the new law immediately, outrageously seated beneath a painting of an antebellum Georgia plantation and flanked by seven white male lawmakers. Just outside, state police arrested Democratic state Representative Park Cannon, who is Black, for the crime of knocking on Kemp’s door. Lots of Georgians, and smart outsiders, think that ugly tableau was intentional, to assure demoralized Trump voters that everything in Georgia is returning to the racist way it ever was; now they can relax and vote Republican again, no matter what Trump says.
“But our voters won’t forget that,” insists Bee Nguyen.
That racist tableau still won’t endear Kemp to Trump, who is looking to support a 2022 primary challenger as payback for Kemp’s crime of certifying his election defeat last year. It is also likely to inflame Georgia Democrats next November, when Warnock will be running again, and many expect, or at least hope, voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams will seek a rematch against the vote-suppressing Republican governor.
SUPPORT PROGRESSIVE JOURNALISM
If you like this article, please give today to help fund The Nation’s work.
When it comes to that November election, Kemp might have been signing his own political death warrant when he signed SB 202. Certainly some political observers think so. Cook Political Reporteditor Dave Wasserman tweeted that the Georgia GOP “just handed Democrats their best turnout tool for 2022 & beyond.” Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called the criminalizing of providing food and water a “Republican blunder” that could galvanize Georgia Democrats, especially those of color, to new heights of participation.
Seth Bringman of Fair Fight Action, the Abrams-led group that works for voting rights, certainly hopes that’s true. If legal efforts to challenge SB 202 fail, and congressional action to shore up voting rights stalls, “then we’ll have to organize around it,” he told me. “It’s true that earlier efforts at voter suppression have empowered voters here to take action,” Bringman added. But he notes that it’s tough to know how many voters were suppressed by those measures, even as others turned out. And putting the onus back on Black voters who have been discouraged, brutalized, and even killed for exercising their right to vote, rather than on the white lawmakers who’ve historically done the brutalizing, is tough for many to take.
Despite Elias’s fair warning against itemizing the bill’s components and designating what’s worst, advocates and analysts are doing that. They have to. The provision criminalizing “line-warming,” or bringing snacks and drinks to voters stuck in long lines, has gotten the most attention in the bill. It’s got a real “What would Jesus not do?” vibe. President Biden singled it out when he attacked the entire law, calling it “sick, sick.” And its racially discriminatory intent seems clear. A lawsuit charging that SB 202 places “unconstitutional burdens on the right to vote,” brought by Elias on behalf of the New Georgia Project and others, quotes a study that found thst in the much-criticized June 2020 primary elections, “the average wait time in Georgia after polls were scheduled to close was six minutes in neighborhoods that were at least 90% white, and 51 minutes in places that were at least 90% nonwhite.”
“There’s no other way to interpret this other than that Georgia Republicans want voters of color to leave those lines and not vote,” says Fair Fight Action’s Bringman.
But other provisions could have a bigger impact, including restrictions on early voting, voter ID requirements for absentee ballots and limits on the number and the hours of ballot drop boxes. Such changes will disproportionately burden voters of color, who adopted those voter access reforms with new enthusiasm in 2020, especially given the dangers of the pandemic. Limiting those measures will also force many voters back onto those long Election Day lines, where they’ll no longer be supported by volunteers providing food and drink. Yeah, it’s a vicious—and very efficient—voter-suppression circle.
Georgia’s most recent, actual election emergency was last June’s primaries, especially in heavily Democratic counties. State Republican officials had already closed precincts, purged “inactive” voters, and conducted other voter suppression exercises in prior elections, but the problems in the primary, creating the extraordinarily long lines, were in some ways worse—or at least more obvious—than what the nation saw in the 2018 governor’s race. Stacey Abrams told me at the time that the 2020 primary mess was was “a combination of malice and incompetence.”
Those problems were widely blamed on Raffensperger, who had inherited the mess. But he in turn blamed them on county election boards in Fulton and DeKalb and other places with lots of Democrats. Elias didn’t entirely disagree: Around the country, “I’ve sued Democratic counties,” he told me. “Voting is an essential service; when it goes well, we shouldn’t act like it’s a treat.”
So those embattled county election boards took action for the November election. They secured mobile voting sites, expanded absentee voting and vote by mail, and added drop boxes for those votes. In Fulton County, they got enormous help in the form of the donation of State Farm Arena as a massive polling place. Sports were shut down during the pandemic, but fans could nonetheless troop there and cast ballots—and they did. By November, Fulton County still had lines in a few places, but the combination of early voting, mail-in voting, expanded dropboxes, mobile sites, and, yes, State Farm Arena reduced the traditional election day lines in Black counties to manageable. Those same fixes made the January runoff run more smoothly.
SB 202 says to those Georgia counties that “all those solutions that you used to fix those problems after last June? You can’t use them now,” says Mother Jones’s voting rights expert Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot and the forthcoming Minority Rule. Elias agrees. Republicans blamed Democratic counties for “creating the long lines. Now they’re preventing the amelioration of those long lines,” he says. For one thing, counties are now prohibited from accepting donations to help them solve voting problems—which some have interpreted as forbidding help from, say, liberal foundations to ease vote-counting burdens, but others believe would ban the acceptance of State Farm Arena access, and even access to churches.“
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
The one group can drink coke or sleep on their my pillows and the other group can avoid mlb or goya products.
How does this impact your vote?
You can exercise your right to patronize a company, or not, but elections are still held
Are you thinking that because of people's loyalty to coke or my pillow that they will be made to think/vote in certain ways?
It is a simple connection. People voted for politicians in Georgia. Politicians passed laws. Some large corporation steps in to pressure politicians to change laws. Seems like said large corporation is exerting political power that liberals hated just years ago. You might say that corporations are responding to what its customers want, but Georgia had a vote and that is how politics should work. If the law passed is unconstitutional you fight it in court.
Coke or some other company threatening to leave a state or not expand in a state is no different than Coke dangling millions of dollars in front of politicians. I thought we wanted to get corporations out of politics? But it is okay because right now they are doing what the liberals want them to do.
I'm not taking any opinion on the law passed in Georgia. I just don't agree with boycotts of companies that have nothing to do with politics to somehow usurp the power of politicians voted in by the public. What is the point of a vote if a small group of people decide to start a twitter war against a public company until the company decides to pressure a state to change its laws?
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
I'd support the idea that it is traditionally used solely based on profit so it is nice to see some thought behind it.
This to me isn't cancel culture. Coke didn't ask others to boycott Georgia, at least that I saw
They said they disagree with some legislation passed by the state and may need to look at relocation. Pressure, yes, certainly.
My pillow can move their business to GA
Hansen's sucks balls.
Fake colas are the worst.
RC or Dr Pepper?
I'm 100% right about my belief that "you can't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear"!
People voted?
If you honestly believe that why don't you meander to my friend Gerry?
Corporations should get out of politics?
Have you considered this is not politics? This is about human rights and these corporations are actually comprised of employees who are also humans, and these people should have rights? That they should have fair access to voting that the white people of Georgia outside of Atlanta have?
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©