Trump might have 'found' the votes he needed to win Georgia under state's new election law

Cabinet Blog Trump might have 'found' the votes he needed to win Georgia under state's new election law best cheap What if Georgia election officials had somehow found those nonexistent votes that then-President Donald Trump pressured them to “find” to overturn his narrow loss in the Peach State? What if there hadn’t been a secretary of state with not only the spine but the authority to make sure the election was immune from partisan cheating? It would have been a devastating loss for democracy, that’s what. And it would have been much easier to pull off had Georgia’s brand-new election law been in place. Thanks to a somewhat overlooked provision in Georgia’s new restrictive voting law and similar measures being pushed in more than a half-dozen other GOP-controlled legislatures, the skids are becoming better greased for Trump-style election tampering in the future. These attempts to subvert the will of voters must be stopped. Related: GA Rep arrested, dragged while gov signed GOP voting bill What is behind the law Tucked inside the new Georgia elections law is a measure that shifts a significant amount of election oversight power from the secretary of state and county election boards to the legislature. The measure removes the elected secretary of state as chair of the state election board and replaces him or her with an appointee of the Republican-run legislature. Such a coincidence! Just a few months after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says “no” to magical vote-finding, the legislature takes a chunk of power and authority from his office and shifts it to someone of their choosing — and, we can only assume, more likely to do their bidding. The law doesn’t just change who picks the chair. Now, the majority of the board’s members will be legislative appointees, and the board gains ominous new power: the ability to remove and replace election officials administering the vote at the level where the real elections work happens — the county level. Let’s say the state board does not like the way vote-counting is going in heavily Democratic Fulton County. Under the new law, the board can fire those in charge and plop in a new boss more to its liking. “After the November election last year,” Gov. Brian Kemp said as he signed the bill into law, “I knew … that significant reforms to our state elections were needed.” Given that no one has produced evidence of large-scale cheating, fraud, counting dead people’s votes, or losing living people’s votes, I think we know what Kemp sees as needing “reform”: Democrat Joe Biden's victory in previously red Georgia. “Republicans are brazenly trying to seize local and state election authority in an unprecedented power grab,” says voting rights leader Stacey Abrams, former Democratic leader in the Georgia State House. The new law, she says, is “intended to alter election outcomes and remove state and county election officials who refuse to put party above the people … Had their grand plan been law in 2020, the numerous attempts by state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters would have succeeded.” Abrams is one of many calling the new Georgia law unconstitutional, and three voting-rights groups have filed a lawsuit. Not to play judge, but bear in mind that the Constitution forbids states from placing undue burdens on citizens’ right to vote. It stands to reason that includes the burden imposed by politicians’ power-grabbing authority over election administration.