Election Security and Transparency Measures Await Georgia Gov’s Signature

Legislators in Georgia double down on election laws in 2024 as they work to prevent unfair elections by emphasizing transparency and proper process. Will Brian Kemp sign them?

Election integrity provisions that aim to eliminate unverifiable, clandestine elections and prevent ballot trafficking, counterfeiting await Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) signature.

The legislation, sanctioned by the Georgia General Assembly in 2024, mandates the incorporation of visible watermarks on ballot paper (HB 974), permits ballots to be accessible via open records requests (SB 189), prohibits political contributions from foreign nationals (SB 368), prohibits unverifiable QR codes (SB 189), and imposes various measures for ensuring secure ballot handling (HB 1207). Between 2020 and 2022, the Georgia legislature made efforts to implement various measures aimed at enhancing election integrity. Despite these endeavors creating a strong foundation, numerous reports of voter fraud persisted.

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Radical leftists have sought to vilify many of the laws by likening them to “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.”

How Do You Prevent Fraud?

“Election security demands fraud prevention, that is one of the key components of election security,” said Garland Favorito, co-founder of VoterGA, a nonprofit election integrity group. “Well, how do you prevent fraud? You have to deter ballot trafficking, ballot counter filling, ballot box stuffing, and you have to also deter or to attack electronic vote manipulation.”

The proposed bills expand on election integrity measures implemented between 2020 and 2022. Those new laws included a prohibition drop boxes outside of polling stations or election offices, prohibiting indirect private funding in elections, substituting signature matching with driver’s license ID verification, and mandating that ballots possess secure paper features.

One of the latest provisions (SB 189), which allows election officials to invoke “probable cause” to remove a voter from the voter roll, has sparked controversy among Democratic lawmakers and activists.

Democrats Pounce

Those in opposition believe the bill will open the door for baseless attacks on voters and will overwhelm administrators and disenfranchise Georgians. Rep. Saira Draper (D) said the provision was based on “lies and fear mongering.”

“You know the policy of not negotiating with terrorists. I wish we had a policy of not making laws to placate conspiracy theorists,” she continued.

Despite the attacks from the Left, “probable cause” will only be a tool to clean voter rolls. Election officials would only invoke probable cause if an individual were deceased, had engaged in voting or voter registration in a different jurisdiction, had applied for a homestead exemption on property taxes in a different jurisdiction, or was registered at a non-residential address.

“We define probable cause very simply,” said Senate Ethics Committee Chair Max Burns (R).

The newly proposed laws have reached Governor Kemp’s desk, and he holds the authority to either sign, veto, or permit the bills to transition into law until May 7th. If the bills become law, Georgia will have one of the most secure election processes in the country.

“I want to issue the challenge to every state in the union, particularly the battleground states,” Favorito said. “Why can’t y’all do the same thing?”

Georgia’s Election Laws Are Racist?

The Left has chosen Georgia as their eternal punching bag for hurling around unfounded accusations of racism and conspiracy whenever the topic of election integrity pops up.

Following Governor Kemp’s signing of the Election Integrity Act in 2021, the Left wasted no time in launching a barrage of attacks against Georgia Republicans, accusing them of voter suppression based in racism.

Even our current president, Joe Biden, hopped in on the fun and slammed the new laws as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.” Politics will always be politics, but accusing the Georgia General Assembly of implementing Jim Crow-era laws is truly stretching the bounds of credibility.

After all the fuss, post-election polls showed that 0 percent of black Georgians during the 2022 midterm elections had trouble voting. The Democrats simply made it up!

According to a post-election poll conducted by the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs, among black Georgia residents surveyed, 0 percent reported a “poor” voting experience, while a significant 94.3 percent expressed either “very confident” or “somewhat confident” their vote counted as intended.

“Yet again, the myth of voter suppression in Georgia fails to be supported by a shred of evidence,” Republican Georgia Gov. Brain Kemp said in a release about the poll.

The Election Integrity Act worked to curb voter fraud and expanded in-person early voting in most counties, while also extending voting periods to weekends and expanding the hours polls are open.

Georgia Leading the Way

The Left is actively working to discredit Georgia’s efforts to secure elections and protect the voices of the American people. Time and time again they turn the narrative toward racism and sew division in the community.

Their resistance to election integrity measures and inclination to blame racism reveal the true intentions of the expanding Left— to maintain control by any means necessary.

Gov. Kemp must either sign these provisions or allow them to be enacted into law. The citizens of Georgia deserve nothing less than a fair and transparent electoral process.

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