Recent Voting Changes Will Effect the Election Result

The impact of recent actions may determine the winner of the presidency in 2024. Changes have been prominent in a few swing states.

Georgia

New laws in Georgia have weakened voter access and paved the way for frivolous mass challenges to voter registrations. A 2021 election bill created new restrictions on mail voting, including ID requirements. Senate Bill 202 prohibits any state official from intervening if their State Election Board went rogue. Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said he’s not in charge of the board and has no authority over it or its actions. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office said he doesn’t have power over the board even though he’s the official counsel for the group. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has no power over the Board, something made explicit in Senate Bill 202.

The Georgia State Election Board (SEB) has, among other abuses, upended early voting procedures and absentee ballot drop-off processes. One member of SEB, Rick Jeffares, told several people that he has secured a job in a future Trump Administration. Janelle King, a conservative pundit, frequently appears on Fox News. The Board has sought to give partisans special access to observe and report on elections only in Fulton County, the state’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold. The board considered a slate of biased monitors. One was a spreader of election conspiracies in Pennsylvania and worked on the post election audit in Arizona’s Maricopa County by Cyber Ninjas. Another was a former Pennsylvania legislator who sought to reverse the certification of that state’s electors in 2020.

At an August rally in Atlanta, Trump praised, by name, Jeffares, Johnston, and King. Fortunately, other proposals made in Georgia didn’t go through. Among them a policy change to end the right for anyone to request a mail ballot.

A recent examination by ProPublica of new election rules in Georgia suggests that local officials in just a handful of rural counties could exclude enough votes to affect the outcome of the 2024 presidential race. In recent years local election boards that have become stacked with partisans.

In Troup County, the election board chair has said there were “statistical anomalies” in the 2020 vote that took votes from Donald Trump. In Ware County, the election board chair is tied to far-right groups and has called democracy “mob rule.” In Spalding County south of Atlanta, the man who is now county election board chair has tweeted that President Joe Biden is a “pedophile.” He has also made sexually degrading statements about Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since Donald Trump lost Georgia in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes, it wouldn’t take much to tip the election.

North Carolina

North Carolina became the strictest in the country with regard to mail-in voting verification. A Republican controlled state legislature was able to override its Democratic governor. In a change since 2020, voters must produce a photo ID to vote, whether in-person or by mail. Mail voters must now include a copy of a voter’s ID along with the signature of a notary or the signature of two witnesses. Ballots must be received by Election Day to be counted when previously those postmarked by Election Day were counted.

The state also passed laws giving partisan poll observers immense power at polling places. The 2023 omnibus law expressly permits observers appointed by political parties to listen to conversations between voters and poll workers and take notes, to move freely around the polling place including leaving and reentering voting enclosures, and to communicate by phone outside the voting enclosure.

Meanwhile, Michigan voters will have better ballot access in 2024 than previously due to the Promote the Vote constitutional amendment approved by 60% of Michigan voters in 2022. Among other things the law expanded opportunities to vote early in person and by mail, increased drop boxes for absentee ballots, expanded same day registration access, and increased acceptable forms of ID.

Arizona

While few changes were made, Arizona Republicans enacted four new laws not in place during the 2020 election. The laws impose criminal penalties on election workers for what are routine election-related activities including sending mail ballots to voters who didn’t explicitly request one. In August, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to stand a state law, H.B. 2492, enacted in 2022 by the Arizona legislature to reinstate a state law that requires residents to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote. The form is provided by the state.

Elsewhere

In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania access to voting basically stayed the same.

Debates over many of these new laws show the effect of the “Big Lie,” where Donald Trump and his supporters accused election officials of doing many nefarious things.