Biden previously referred to Georgia’s recently passed election law as ‘Jim Crow in the 21st Century.’
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is defending election integrity in his state ahead of President Joe Biden’s speech in Atlanta, where he is expected to endorse a “carve out” of the Senate’s legislative filibuster so Democrats can unilaterally pass their voting rights agenda.
And Raffensperger is calling on Republicans and Democrats to work together to pass election reforms that have broad support among members of both parties.
In an interview with National Review on Tuesday, Raffensperger said there is no truth to the allegations of large-scale voter disenfranchisement in Georgia after state lawmakers passed a new election security bill last year that Biden referred to as “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.”
“Georgia has record registrations and record voter turnout,” Raffensperger said.
In addition to increasing early voting days in the state – offering Georgia voters more early voting opportunities than New York, New Jersey, or Biden’s home state of Delaware – S.B. 202 also required people voting by mail to include a driver’s license or state ID number on their absentee ballot, established the use of ballot drop boxes in the state, and banned people from handing out gifts to people waiting in line to vote, a tactic known as line-warming. Last month, the Heritage Foundation ranked Georgia’s elections the most trustworthy in the nation.
Raffensperger has been a vocal critic of the Democrats’ proposed federal election takeover. Their legislation would make state voter ID laws irrelevant, make it harder to stop non-citizens from voting, require same-day registration for federal elections, require states to offer mail voting, and extend the absentee ballot deadline to seven days after Election Day.
Raffensperger said he is instead calling for a Constitutional amendment that would limit voting to only American citizens. The proposal comes days after New York City mayor Eric Adams signed a law allowing the city’s 800,000 non-citizens to vote in municipal elections.
The secretary of state is also calling for a nationwide photo ID requirement for any form of voting, and a ban on ballot harvesting. “The only person who should touch your ballot is you, the voter, or the election official,” he said.
Raffensperger noted that voter ID requirements are supported by majorities of registered Republicans and Democrats. He called voter ID a “common sense reform measure.” The only people who don’t support voter ID laws seem to be “far leftwing activists,” he said.
“For some reason President Biden is leaning into what they’re saying,” Raffensperger said. “He needs to lean into the mainstream of his party.”
Raffensperger also said he supports reforming the Electoral Count Act to clarify the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes after a presidential election. Any deeper dive into federal election reforms should be developed by a bipartisan commission including respected representatives from both political parties.
Raffensperger said he is concerned that the Democrats efforts to federalize elections, while at the same time casting doubt on the integrity of future elections, is “not helpful for American democracy.” For example, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D, South Carolina) recently said in an interview that if Democrats don’t pass their voting rights legislation “I don’t see how we can have unfettered elections in November where every vote will be counted.”
That kind of rhetoric is “going to split our society further, and we don’t need further polarization,” Raffensperger said.
Regarding the politics of the current Democratic focus on voting rights, Raffensperger said he doesn’t fully understand it. Even many leftwing partisans acknowledge that scrapping the filibuster and unilaterally passing their voting rights legislation is likely a longshot. The decision to focus on voting rights comes after the failure of their Build Back Better bill, after the debacle surrounding the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and while the country is experiencing sky-high inflation and record illegal border crossings.
“They just continue to be picking failure after failure, because (Bide) keeps on listening to his far-fringe leftwing base,” Raffensperger said. “As an American, I would like to see a president that actually makes some effort to reach across the aisle and work with people of good faith and good character who want to work with him. And I just don’t see that.”