(Headline USA) With ripples of the siege on the US Capitol still undulating through the toxic political discourse in Washington, DC, some left-wing public officials already have reverted back to being perfectly fine with activist efforts to disrupt the democratic process.
An Democrat state lawmaker was arrested in Atlanta Thursday during riotous protests over Georgia’s plan to correct the serious flaws in its election law.
NEW: Capitol police are detaining/arresting Democratic Rep. Park Cannon, per this Instagram Live video. #gapolhttps://t.co/8194lQNUzl https://t.co/nUm2HYJvQc
— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) March 25, 2021
Despite the activist sideshow outside his office, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed the law to implement new safeguards on voting by mail and to reassert legislative oversight after disastrous mismanagement drew nationwide condemnation and added to a growing distrust in America’s foundering political institutions.
The problems were largely introduced last year after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger unilaterally settled a lawsuit with Democrat-backed anti-election-integrity groups while failing to consult the state legislature.
As a result, Georgia became the center of a political storm due to a series of irregularities following the Nov. 3 presidential election and a Jan. 5 Senate runoff. Democrats wound up claiming victory in both.
Kemp signed the bill less than two hours after it cleared the Georgia General Assembly. The state House approved it 100-75, before the state Senate quickly agreed to House changes, 34-20. Republicans supported it, with Democrats opposed.
“After the November election last year, I knew, like so many of you, that significant reforms to our state elections were needed,” said Kemp, who drew ire from then-President Donald Trump and many of his Georgia constituents for certifying the tainted results in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The governor insisted he was powerless to do otherwise under state law.
As Kemp delivered his remarks Thursday, he was interrupted by a commotion before a livestream of the event cut out.
Democratic state Rep. Park Cannon, who is black, was arrested by capitol police after pounding on the door of the governor’s office during his remarks.
Cannon was charged with felony obstruction of law enforcement, punishable by one to five years in prison, and with disrupting a session of the General Assembly. She was released late Thursday night.
FIGHTING THE POWER-GRAB
The legislative push in Georgia and other GOP-led state assemblies comes amid the backdrop of an unprecedented power-grab by Democrats in Congress, who have advanced their own election overhaul bill that would thoroughly undermine states’ authority and pave the way to massive vote fraud.
To do so—in the hopes of securing permanent electoral majorities for themselves—they have threatened dispatch with the few remaining checks on their authority, such as the filibuster in the evenly divided Senate and the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court.
Biden’s inhumane opening of the southern border, which has led to thousands of children being locked in storage crates and jail-like detention centers, is another ploy to import new Democrat voters, whom he hopes to grant amnesty within a few years, making them full-fledged citizens.
During his first presidential press conference on Thursday, while speculating on his own re-election plans and that of his predecessor, former president Donald Trump, Biden sneered that he did not even know if the Republican Party would exist three and a half years from now.
With many still maintaining that Biden’s win was illegitimate due to last-minute “emergency” changes by leftist leaders, and suspicious circumstances surrounding both mail-in ballots and voting machines, GOP-led legislatures have been left to clean up the mess.
A RAFT OF REFORMS
Notwithstanding the dishonest rhetoric to the contrary, Kemp said the bill aims to improve access for those who have a legal right to cast ballots in the state.
“What this bill actually does is fight the rhetoric from those that are fund-raising off of this issue and polarizing it, to take away from the unconstitutional power grab of H.R. 1 that’s going on in Washington D.C. right now,” Kemp said in a statement.
“It further secures our absentee ballots by mail by requiring a photo I.D., which the vast majority of Georgians support,” he continued. “It is also adding days of early voting on the weekends.”
In addition, the law:
- replaces the elected secretary of state as the chair of the state election board with a new appointee of the legislature
- allows the board to remove and replace county election officials deemed to be underperforming
- reduces the timeframe in which runoff elections are held, including the amount of early voting for runoffs
- bars outside groups from handing out food or water to people in line to vote
- mandates two Saturdays of early voting ahead of general elections, when only one had been mandatory, and leaves two Sundays as optional
The question of Sunday voting had been a matter of some contention in the state, where churches play a major role in both the white and black rural communities.
Republicans had proposed limits on early voting on the Christian sabbath day. But in predominantly black churches, it is a popular occasion for community activism—including organized “souls to the polls” mass-voting events.
“We’re expanding the right to vote in Georgia,” he said.
“You’re not hearing that from the other side,” he continued. “That’s what the truth is, as well as further securing absentee ballot boxes, which didn’t exist before.”
FROM FACEBOOK TO FULTON COUNTY
In addition to requiring photo ID for absentee ballots, the law cuts the time people have to request an absentee ballot and limits where ballot drop boxes can be placed and when they can be accessed.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was directly responsible for supplying many of the unsecured ballot boxes in blue areas like Atlanta during the 2020 election, leading to investigations in some states, like Wisconsin, that he may have illegally influenced the vote.
Zuckerberg also offered salaries to Democrat poll workers and election officials, which likely opened the door to problems like those witnessed at Fulton County’s State Farm Arena.
On election night, officials there appeared to have been caught on video scanning unprocessed ballots from suitcases hidden beneath the tables after shutting down the official count around 10 p.m. and sending home election observers due to a leaky toilet.
Once again, in order to block the new GOP-backed safeguards from becoming law, Democrats were leveraging their well-funded and well-organized activist infrastructure to wage unrelenting pressure campaigns.
In addition to targeting politicians like Kemp directly, they were filing lawsuits and threatening boycotts of companies like Atlanta-based Coca-Cola that refused to support their radical demands.
Led by failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, anti-integrity groups claimed, without evidence, that the law would disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color. Abrams, herself, refused to concede the race after her 2018 loss to Kemp, despite his win having fallen outside the margin for an automatic recount.
A lawsuit filed late Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta by three groups—New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter Fund and Rise—challenged key provisions of the new law, claiming they violated the Voting Rights Act.
Some so-called voter ‘mobilization’ groups, including the Abrams-founded New Georgia Project, have themselves been accused of violating the law by engaging in illegal ballot-harvesting, intentionally attempting to register thousands of ineligible voters, sending ballots to dead people and other questionable practices during the recent election.
LET THE RACE-BAITING COMMENCE
Democratic state Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler called the efforts by Republicans “voter suppression tactics,” while speciously invoking the race-card—a common tactic deployed by Abrams and others to suppress rational policy discussion.
“We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights unlike anything we’ve seen since the Jim Crow era,” Butler added, echoing a talking point used by Biden and many other white Democrats in recent days.
Democratic Rep. Rhonda Burnough claimed the bill was based on lies told by Republicans after November’s election.
“Georgians turned out in record-breaking numbers because they could access the ballot,” Burnough said. “Lies upon lies were told about our elections in response, and now this bill is before us built on those same lies.”
However, GOP lawmakers in the state continued to dismiss the baseless attacks.
Republican Rep. Jan Jones said the provisions cutting the time people have to request an absentee ballot are meant to “increase the likelihood of a voter’s vote being cast successfully,” after concerns were raised about mail ballots not being received in time to be counted.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
