The Georgia GOP may have made things harder for Herschel

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Voter suppression efforts can also suppress friendly votes

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/georgias-runoff-election-law-trip-herschel-walker-rcna60175?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

The resulting bill — SB 202 — has been rightly decried as representing a new round of voter suppression in the Deep South state where the demographics are shifting away from the rural white voters that the GOP has relied on. Many of the changes made in the name of “election integrity” were clearly considered a means to hamper Democratic turnout. But we may learn Tuesday that instead of hurting Warnock, the law hindered the odds of a victory by his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker.

Among other things, Georgia’s new voting law changed how runoff elections are conducted. The last runoff Warnock faced came on Jan. 5, 2021, nine weeks after Election Day 2020. In the meantime, Democrats hustled to mobilize the people who had already voted in November and register new voters ahead of the January vote. They also pushed Warnock supporters to vote early by mailing ballots, using drop boxes or showing up in person.

The law shrunk this runoff period to just 28 days. Many of the pandemic-related expansions of early voting access were slashed, which limited the number of drop boxes and the number of days they were available. Also, this time, the last day to register new voters for the run-off election was the day before the primary election. And early in-person voting was shortened from a minimum of 17 days to five days......

But the reduced turnaround hasn’t necessarily been to Walker’s benefit. Numerous organizing issues, and a lack of hustle from the candidate himself, suggest that having such a brief window to sell Walker to voters might have been a mistake, The New York Times reported:

“We almost need a little bit more time for Herschel’s campaign to get everything off the ground,” said Jason Shepherd, the former chairman of the Cobb County Republican Party, pointing to the transition from a general election campaign to a runoff sprint. […] “I think we’re behind the eight ball on this one,” Mr. Shepherd added.

Meanwhile, the provision of the new law that prevents newly registered voters from taking part on Tuesday doesn’t just hurt Democrats: It also means that any Georgians who might have signed up specifically to support Walker couldn’t do so. That might be a problem given how badly Walker underperformed compared to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp last month. (Kemp drew more than 200,000 votes than Walker did.) One of the big questions Tuesday is whether Republicans who supported Kemp then but not Walker will show up and grudgingly vote for him.

[Wounded Bear]

1. I can't imagine how they could have made it easier...

[BumRushDaShow]

2. "having such a brief window to sell Walker to voters might have been a mistake"

The longer he was out there "talking", the worse he got. So it might have been a saving grace for them not to have him do his deluxe vaudeville circus performance just in case they wanted to run him for some other elective office.

The GOP suddenly engaging in voter suppression by attacking the mail voting here in PA, which was a voting method actually proposed and voted for almost unanimously by the GOP in our state legislature (save for 1 member), was really designed for rural voters who had way fewer polling locations due to their county's nature. Their focus on it being something that "Democrats would want" was pushed in exchange for Democrats giving up straight-party voting (which was agreed to when our (D) governor signed Act-77 into law in late 2019).

But when we used it in massive numbers due to the pandemic and that actually generated near historic turnout, suddenly they wanted to get rid of it...

Yet during this past year's Senatorial primary, a GOP candidate went to court to get undated mail ballots counted (although it didn't make much difference in the final tally for his votes after a recount).