List: Georgia among 'easiest' states to vote in, better than Delaware and New York
by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist |
| April 12, 2021
Take that Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines, and Coca-Cola.
A new nonpartisan evaluation of 2022 election laws has named Georgia as one of the easiest states to vote early in, a repudiation of attacks from baseball, corporate America, and others that criticized new state reforms under pressure from liberals, including President Joe Biden.
While critics have called recent reforms in the state “racist” and an effort to limit minority voting, the Center for Election Innovation and Research found that Georgia is among the 36 states with the easiest rules.
The center put Georgia in the “green” category, which it explained are states that offer “all-mail or no-excuse absentee and in-person early voting.”
Center for Election Innovation & Research
The report followed Georgia’s much-criticized election reforms. The report noted that some states are moving away from easy voting rules, though it did not mention the changes in the Peach State blasted by Coca-Cola, Delta, and MLB.
Asked if it included the Georgia changes, David Becker, the former Pew Research Center executive who founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told Secrets, “Yes, it does. While it’s clear that Georgia still remains fairly strong in its availability of early and mail voting options, by making it more difficult to request a mail ballot and deliver it to a drop box, along with other troubling provisions, the state’s recent laws are moving it in the wrong direction.”
Still, it ranked ahead of Biden’s home state of Delaware and New York. The First State was put in the “yellow” category, though the report noted that the state plans to ease its rules.
Becker said that allowing easier access to voting, including early in-person opportunities, improves election integrity.
“The 2020 election cycle was the most secure election in American history,” he said in releasing the report.
“Voter lists were more accurate, there were more secure paper ballots, more states audited and recounted those ballots, and there was more scrutiny of the process by the courts, than ever before,” he added, dismissing charges from former President Donald Trump and others that the election was “stolen.” |
