Georgia's New Election Laws

 The first question that comes to mind regarding Georgia's new election laws is why? We had multiple Trump appointed officials from different parts of the government who vouched for the fairness and legitimacy of the 2020 election. So why introduce bills that say that they will restore or guarantee election integrity?

Suspicion of the election started before the elections of both 2016 and 2020. That suspicion was based on Trump's pre-election claims that the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged. We had many "prophets" of God who first called for a Trump victory in 2020 and then supported Trump's claims that the election was rigged. And regardless of how the Courts ruled with many of the presiding judges being Trump appointees, and the Attorney General, a Trump appointee and loyalist to some degree, who vouched for the election, and Trump's Department of Homeland Security that also vouched for the election, his disillusioned followers believed Trump and desperately clung to legal appeals and conspiracy theories in believing that there was massive fraud. BTW, distrust in the election system is a reported aim of Putin's Russian government. And it is no secret that Trump was Putin's representative in our government.

So now, not only do we see many Republican led overtures to change election laws in their states, these proposals are aimed at limiting minority participation in elections. Why?

It is because Trump's lies live on. And they live on in one of his largest bases: white Evangelical Christians. Franklin Graham serves as an example. Graham has criticized MLB on his Twitter account for moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia's new election laws. Graham's criticisms seem to come from a tribalism that, out of loyalty, embraces Trump's false claims about the election.

In the meantime, many middle class white Evangelicals will wonder why those in lower economic classes don't have the same degree of access to ids, especially the new Real IDs, that they have. That simply is a matter of privilege and a deliberately obscured view of what life is like for many Blacks who live in lower economic class neighborhoods.

How can we assess the effects of the new election laws passed in Georgia and in any other state? We simply look at the statistics regarding minority participation in our future elections. And that might seem counterintuitive to those conservatives who claim that the Republican Party is appealing to more and more people of color. But we should note that increased participation by minorities in elections infringe on the chances that Republican Party candidates will win. We can thank the NBA players who started getting their teams' owners involved in increasing the opportunities for people to vote. That is a point not lost on many white political conservatives who have altered their viewing of professional sports because of the stands on social justice that many players are taking.

In fact, one of the reasons why the All-Star Game is being moved from Atlanta is because of the voice of the players who called for such a move because of Georgia's new election laws. And that is a point that Republicans and their supporters, like Franklin Graham, seem to have overlooked in their reaction to the moving of the All-Star Game from Atlanta. It is the voice of some of the people, not just the voice of corporations that seek to show woke credentials, that demanded the change.