The Week Ahead

August 4, 2024

Tuesday is the next regularly scheduled meeting for the Georgia State Election Board. There have been some shenanigans going on in Georgia lately. Republican members of the Board scheduled a meeting that arguably ran afoul of the Georgia Open Meetings Rules and was held at a time they knew other members were unable to attend. Then, they adopted some measures that made it more difficult for Georgians to vote, including one that would have imposed burdens on election workers by dramatically increasing the number of partisan poll watchers permitted at vote tabulation centers.

Although they rescinded some of those measures under pressure, they may reconsider them Tuesday, so this meeting will be watched carefully. And what’s happening in Georgia is just a harbinger of what we may expect to see elsewhere as the election gets closer and politicians who are afraid of voters try to disenfranchise them.

All of this as Kamala Harris prepares to announce who her choice for vice president is. Something the process has made plain is that Democrats have a deep bench, with governors, at least one senator, and a cabinet secretary in the mix.

Back in Georgia, sure to be a battleground state again this election, there are also concerns about a web portal being rolled out by Brad Raffensberger, the Secretary of State, who is the top election official in Georgia. Although it is meant, or so we are told, to make it easy for people who are moving out of state or who have a deceased family member to remove them from Georgia’s voter rolls, there are concerns it will be exploited by groups who want to disenfranchise voters. That’s the case because anyone is allowed to request that a voter be “purged” from the rolls on the Georgia Voter Registration Cancellation Portal. Although some identifying information is necessary to do so, an earlier “glitch” where the system temporarily made voters' confidential information publicly available is being cited as a reason to believe the system is ripe for abuse. And there are other challenges brewing in Georgia over new provisions that make it easier to purge voters who do not have a permanent home address, despite the fact that they are entitled to vote if otherwise eligible.

This is a good week to find a place to engage in pro-voting work, whether it’s helping people register, working on a local campaign, volunteering as an election worker, or joining the Harris campaign or another. The national volunteer form for the Harris campaign can be found here.

These types of anti-voting devices are going to be seen across the country. They are not reasons for despair; they are reasons to get to work. Groups like the League of Women Voters that advocate for the rights of all voters regardless of who they intend to vote for will succeed again in protecting voters’ rights

Many people are concerned that local election officials in red states will simply refuse to certify results for Democratic candidates. Voting guru Marc Elias has written an excellent piece explaining that while this has happened in the past, Republican election deniers are better organized this year and are likely to do more of it. Because there is no legal basis for them to do so, lawsuits typically produce results necessary to certify the elections using whatever method is proscribed by local law. But it does require work by dedicated groups of lawyers, and we are fortunate to have them. This will play out across the country during election season.

For each of us, the mantra needs to be: register, make sure you remain registered, vote, and make sure your vote gets counted. And help the people around you do the same thing. This is a great week to work on that because, after the 90th day before the election, registered voters cannot be removed from the active voter rolls. Take a screenshot to prove your status! This nifty countdown to the election clock tells us that Wednesday will be the 89th day, so make a note on your calendar to check your status, remind the people around you to do the same, and encourage those who aren’t already registered to go ahead and get it done! You can use websites like vote.gov or IWillVote.com to register and check your status.

If you’re removed from the active voter rolls you can still ask for and vote a provisional ballot. But it’s a hassle to take the steps necessary to have it counted (that’s sort of the point), so make it a point to get as many people as possible to ensure they’re voters in good standing. Vote.org also provides a handy reference to help people know what their last day to register is in their state.

Trump was in Georgia Saturday night, and he set off a little firestorm, talking smack about Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp. They both took to social media to respond. We have yet to see the “Republicans in disarray” headlines that would be a prominent feature of the landscape if this sort of infighting was happening among Democrats.

It continued.

On Friday, expect the focus to turn to the District of Columbia. That’s because Judge Chutkan has ordered lawyers for the government and Donald Trump to file their joint status report that day. The parties are required to confer and propose a schedule for pretrial proceedings moving forward to the Judge. If they cannot agree, she has asked them to file a document with each side making its own statement. This one is interesting because its centerpiece should be the parties’ joint or separate ideas for how to determine what impact the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity will have on the charges prosecutors can continue to bring and the evidence they will be able to use.

It’s going to be an important week.

We’re in this together,

Joyce